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I wonder whether there is any resolve left in U.S. intelligence think-tanks, (or for that matter if there was any to begin with), as they continue to offer the stale formula that Iraq was a disastrous trap which we fell into, which has caused us to take our eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan and Pakistan . That is one of the premises offered in Bruce Riedel’s piece in Foreign Affairs this month under the Star-War-isque title “Al Quaeda Strikes Back.” If this war was a space opera, then these Washington smarter sorts would play the role of Lando Calrissian, ready to turn over Cloud City without a fight. Of course good old Lando found himself a backbone in the end, but I have little hope our retired C.I.A. “real-politic” crowd ever will.

What’s particularly odd about this essay is Riedel describes in detail how al Quaeda is operating in Iraq to stir up a civil war and to slowly bleed the United States, but he wants us to escape this “trap” and fight al Quaeda in Pakistan, a country which we have little leeway to operate in. But isn’t the stated mission of the U.S. to find and destroy al Quaeda wherever they exist, including Iraq? Why wouldn’t we want to engage the enemy here?

He then apparently forgets whom he ascribed the fault of the civil war to (al Quaeda), as he then urges that “the objective now should be to let the Iraqis settle their conflicts themselves…the United States should disengage from the civil war in Iraq with a complete…withdrawal.” But the Sunni-Shia conflict is one which our enemy has instigated, why would the U.S. run from such a challenge? This is how in the end wars are won or lost, with the enemy instituting their will, chaos and civil war, or you instituting your will, security and democracy. This is why we have an army, this is why we fight, and this is why we can not leave Iraq till the mission is complete.

Eradicating a cowardly enemy, who uses citizenry as shields, and suicide bombers as weapons, is clearly difficult work. It’s the grunt work of war, and can’t be shirked by retreating and solely focusing on killing the al Quaeda leadership in the Pakistani badlands. For, as Riedel himself says, the decapitation of the al Quaeda head in Iraq, Zarqawi, had little affect on its operations. (I mean decapitation in the Western symbolic sense, not in the barbaric terrorist sense.) This is not to say I think the death of Zawahiri and Bin laden wouldn’t be a great boon to our efforts, it would. But their deaths would not end the Islamic fascist movement nor this war.

In the Second Punic War, the general Hannibal inflicted repeated, grievous blows to the Roman republic. At the Battle of Trebia 20,000 Romans died; at Lake Trasimene 30,000 killed; and at Cannae a devastating 70,000 were slaughtered. Over one-fifth of the Roman population over seventeen were dead from these campaigns. Did the Romans sue for peace? No, instead they outlawed the word “peace” from public discourse and reconstituted their army and eventually destroyed the Carthagians at Zama.

Our wise men, on the other hand, would have us scurry from the field when they should be calling for resolve to complete the mission which we have set for ourselves; the creation of a vibrant democracy in the Middle East. These past four years in Iraq should only have taught us that our enemy is brutal and fixed on its target, the U.S., we need to be likewise focussed, and that our mission is all the more critical.