More wisdom from the man who will bring all the "combat troops" home from Iraq within sixteen months.
As you know, we here at BDC have been asking, as non-combat troops ourselves, exactly why we would do that. Turns out, it's because hanging out in Iraq is distracting.
Okay. I can see that. I mean, although I was a non-combat troop (that is, a troop to whom combat happens, but who is not...well...oh hell, let's not get into all that), I did find that being in Iraq distracted me from certain things. Like...I dunno...hanging out with my husband, drinking cold beer (or, for that matter, warm beer), eating holiday meals with my family, etc etc.
So. Yes. Iraq = distraction. Alas, that doesn't seem to be what Sen. Obama meant. Because the Senator is a very verbal man, he goes on tell us what he means.
"As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. [John] McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was," Obama said in what his campaign called a major policy address on Iraq, Afghanistan and national security.
Obama said that part of his new strategy will be "taking the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan." [emphasis added]
See, that's an important point, clarification-wise. Senator Obama seems to believe that being in Iraq is distracting our combat troops from...invading Pakistan?
Honestly, there might be some vaildity to that point, but "taking the fight" across the largely imaginary Pakistan border, at least in any way that we'd talk about, is probably something that bears a little more discussion than the average throwaway line in one of the Senator's speeches.
Fortunately, the Senator continues to imply this fight-taking is the work of the combat troops who have been thus far more or less, he seems to think, fucking around in the desert in Iraq for no apparent reason. I for one am glad for that, even if it means I have to spend a tour in Iraq without the combat troops, because at least it doesn't imply my participation in the first rotation of Operation Waziristan Freedom, or, as President Obama might choose to call it, Operation Hindu Kush Hope.
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