“Last Gasps in Iraq,” by Ralph Peters, USA Today, 2 November 2006, http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/post_6.html (from The Corner).

I don’t agree with all of Peters’ analysis, but he sure gets this part right:

And contrary to the prophets of doom, the United States wouldn’t be weakened by our withdrawal, should it come to that. Iraq was never our Vietnam. It’s al-Qaeda’s Vietnam. They’re the ones who can’t leave and who can’t win.

Islamist terrorists have chosen Iraq as their battleground and, even after our departure, it will continue to consume them. We’ll still be the greatest power on earth, indispensable to other regional states — such as the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia — that are terrified of Iran’s growing might. If the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries.

In spite of the Bush administrations’ incompetence in Iraq — in spite of their attempted appeasement of terrorists and subversion of democracy in order to play games with Iran — the Iraq War continues to be one of the Bush Administrations’ best moves. Not only did we remove Saddam Hussein — that Milosevic of Arabia — from power, we chose the battlefield where al Qaeda would confront us. We chose to fight them in a country where they could not win, where a majority of the population is implacably hostile to al Qaeda, where Iraqi people power would mechanically crush the Qaedists, the Baathists, and all of their allies.

We will not obtain Bush’s maximal objectives for Iraq. It will ally in this Global War against Terrorism. And it will bring military defeat to Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and all the other terrorist dogs. And all we have to do is leave.