http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901987.html

Which Is 'The Real War'?

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, March 30, 2007; Page A17

"Our bill calls for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq so that
we can focus more fully on the real war on terror, which is in
Afghanistan."

-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 8

The Senate and the House have both passed bills for ending the Iraq war,
or at least liquidating the American involvement in it. The resolutions,
approved by the barest majorities, were underpinned by one unmistakable
theme: wrong war, wrong place, distracting us from the real war that is
elsewhere.

Where? In Afghanistan. The emphasis on Afghanistan echoed across the
Democratic side of the aisle in Congress from Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee to
former admiral and Rep. Joe Sestak. It is a staple of the three leading
Democratic candidates for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama
and John Edwards. It is the refrain of their last presidential
candidate, John Kerry, and of their current party leader, Howard Dean,
who complains that "we don't have enough troops in Afghanistan. That's
where the real war on terror is."

Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, the greater importance of
Afghanistan is the least serious.

And not just because this argument assumes that the world's one
superpower, which spends more on defense every year than the rest of the
world combined, does not have the capacity to fight an insurgency in
Iraq as well as in Afghanistan. But because it assumes that Afghanistan
is strategically more important than Iraq.

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian
-- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot
wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a
geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or
technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three
principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population,
an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though
suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could
easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to
that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers
inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which
is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are
asking the question.

Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one
whose presence in Afghanistan (or some cave on the border) presumably
makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that
"the most . . . serious issue today for the whole world is this Third
World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, has
declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in
this era."

And it's not just what al-Qaeda says, it's what al-Qaeda does. Where are
they funneling the worldwide recruits for jihad? Where do all the
deranged suicidists who want to die for Allah gravitate? It's no longer
Afghanistan but Iraq. That's because they recognize the greater prize.

The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no
strategic sense. Instead, it reflects a sensibility. They would rather
support the Afghan war because its origins are cleaner, the casus belli
clearer, the moral texture of the enterprise more comfortable.
Afghanistan is a war of righteous revenge and restitution, law
enforcement on the grandest of scales. As senator and presidential
candidate Joe Biden put it, "If there was a totally just war since World
War II, it is the war in Afghanistan."

If our resources are so stretched that we have to choose one front, the
Martian would choose Iraq. But that is because, unlike a majority of
Democratic senators, he did not vote four years earlier to authorize the
war in Iraq, a vote for which many have a guilty conscience to be
soothed retroactively by pulling out and fighting the "totally just
war."

But you do not decide where to fight on the basis of history; you decide
on the basis of strategic realities. You can argue about our role in
creating this new front and question whether it was worth taking that
risk to topple Saddam Hussein. But you cannot reasonably argue that in
2007 Iraq is not the most critical strategic front in the war on
terrorism. There's no escaping its centrality. Nostalgia for the "good
war" in Afghanistan is perhaps useful in encouraging antiwar Democrats
to increase funding that is needed there. But it is not an argument for
abandoning Iraq.