Country Last

Having been driven out of Iraq despite Barack Obama's heroic efforts on their behalf, al Qaeda's western wing (as opposed to the eastern wing in Pakistan) has found a new home - which they, er, christened with a bang:

Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

American intelligence officials believe that Osama bin Laden’s organization is regrouping in the governorates of Ma’rib, al-Jawf, and Hadhramaut along Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, and that Al Qaeda in Yemen is now being led by a former military aide to Mr. bin Laden, Nasir al-Wahishi.

“The foreign-fighter flow in Iraq has slowed down to a trickle,” a retired four-star general and adviser to Multi-National Force-Iraq, General Jack Keane, told the New York Sun. “They can’t get to their operational cells to be a bomber or a fighter, so some of them are going to other safe havens. A lot of this has to do with where they came from. But two of the places certainly are Pakistan and Yemen.”

That assessment was supported by two American intelligence officials whom the Sun contacted for comment on the bombing of the American Embassy yesterday in Sana’a. The attack killed sixteen Yemeni nationals but no Americans, the Associated Press reported, and the attackers included at least one suicide bomber, as well as gunmen wearing Yemeni military uniforms and armed with rocket-propelled grenades. One of the tasks of the FBI, which will investigate the attack, will be to determine whether members of Yemen’s armed forces participated in the attack.

Interesting, huh?  Not so much the embassy attack, which wasn't the first one even this year, but some of the attackers wearing Yemeni military uniforms.  Could the jihadis have pilfered them?  Sure, particularly given the all around indifference to and marked lack of enthusiasm for aiding us in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism.  But if those "gunmen" were Yemeni military, that means either that they went rogue, or their government is now in passive cahoots with AQ, not unlike the even more hair-raising state of affairs in Pakistan.

As Ensign Ed observed, by the terms of the original Bush Doctrine, this would bring the Yemeni regime into our crosshairs for punitive action free of the complications of Islamic nuclear arsenals and keeping them out of the wrong hands.  This would also be important in order to prevent a revival of the attempted Islamist takeover of Somalia that the Ethiopians crushed two years ago.  The imperative of the (original) Bush Doctrine was to pre-empt mass-casuality Islamist terrorism by denying the enemy state sanctuaries where they can headquarter, gather resources, train, and mount offensives against Western targets.  We've beaten them in Iraq (despite Barack Obama's heroic efforts), we could beat them in Afghanistan did they not have a state-allowed sanctuary in northwest Pakistan.  Gifting them much less isolated Yemen is a complacency we cannot afford.

Similarly, anybody who has consulted my thoughts on Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons knows that I have staunchly maintained since at least the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq over five years ago that Iran needs to be liberated by American military power even more urgently than Iraq did in order to avert the doomsday scenario of an irrational, theocratic, viciously anti-Semitic and anti-American Islamist regime launching a nuclear holocaust under the banner of a "holy" religious quest.  Throw in the revanchist neo-Cold War hostilities with Vladimir Putin's Russia and the ever-arming, ever-scheming Red Chinese and the picture of the world that the next president is going to inherit is one of a world that will spin into bloody chaos in the absence of firm American leadership backed by unchallengable American power.

John Sith McCain, whatever his myriad other perfidious faults, would provide such leadership on the world stage.  This, on the other hand, exemplifies the leadership vacuum in store if the voters throw caution, prudence, and sanity to the four winds and opt to "make history" instead:

“We are pleased to inform you that the keynote speakers at the “Stop Iran. Now!” Rally are confirmed to be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Governor Sarah Palin and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel,” read an e-mail from a leader of a Jewish group planning the event.

But the curtain came down on the comedy sketch-turned-reality before the duo ever hit the stage: Clinton officials soon said they had not been told Palin would be on hand — and that her presence, which made the event a political one, would mean the absence of the New York senator.

The McCain-Palin campaign has not yet said whether Palin herself will still be attending the event, but released a statement criticizing Clinton’s withdrawal. “Governor Palin believes that the danger of a nuclear Iran is greater than party or politics,” said spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. “She hopes that all parties can rally together in opposition to this grave threat.”

Feel free to jump in at any time here if you think I'm in desperate need of advice, but wouldn't the presence of ANY politician make this event "political," by that broad a definition?  Indeed, wouldn't having a prominent member of BOTH parties present balance out the rostrum and drain the program of any partisan perceptions?  AP correctly argues that Her Majesty's fleeing Palinmania is what brought politics into this equation.  What possible harm could come from Mrs. Clinton and Barracuda speaking jointly or severally on behalf of a cause that no truly "patriotic" American can possibly oppose?

Answer: None, if your top priority is protecting our country and its allies from mortal threats; is avoiding the horrific spectre of American and/or European and/or Israeli civilian death tolls in the tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions; is doing everything possible to avoid one city after another going up in hellish mushroom-shaped pyres of atomic conflagration.

But if your top priority is to diminish the United States as a world power, is an incurable neurosis of post-modernist guilt and multicultural self-loathing, is the at-all-costs furtherance of suicidal pacifism, and most immediately is to keep your party's neoBolshevik crazoid base from mutinying in a geyser of utter, shrieking rage, then letting Hillary Clinton even be in the same zip code at Sarah Palin is an act of fratricide that you dare not contemplate.

I tend to think, though, that snubbing the cause of denying the mullahgarchy nuclear weapons was secondary; after all, the Dems know that the window of gumption for a Bush strike against Iran has long-since closed, and Darth Queeg isn't about to suggest re-opening it.  Hell, the Bushies won't even let the Israelis do it for them.  They've been cowed and browbeaten and all but physically bludgeoned into submission, and are doing what Dubya once vowed he would never do: punt the issue to the next administration.  Besides which, the Dems are convinced that False Messiah will "judge between the nations and settle disputes for many peoples. The [Iranians] will beat their [nuclear] swords into plowshares and their [atomic] spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."

No, the idea here wasn't to defect to Tehran, but to deny Governor Palin a public appearance on an equal footing with the Feminazi Popette.  A suspicion whose confirmation was not long in emerging: