Still Think Cut & Run is a Good Strategy?

I've argued many times that if we retreat from Iraq as many on the left want us to do, we'll be back there in a decade or less. Here's a great example of just what I mean:

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda militants are operating with "great comfort" in Somalia, providing training and assistance to a radical military element loyal to the Islamic group that controls most of southern Somalia, a senior State Department official said Wednesday.

Jendayi Frazer, who heads the department's Africa bureau, said a priority U.S. goal is the capture of three militants wanted for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and a hotel in Kenya in 2002. The three are from Sudan, Kenya and the Comoros Islands, located off Africa's east
coast.

"We're continuing to work with all sides in Somalia to try get those terrorists turned over and to prevent Somalia from becoming a safe haven," Frazer told a small group of reporters.

Too late. Somalia is already a safe haven for al-Qaeda and others. By us pulling out after the infamous Blackhawk Down incident (an incident that Osama bin-Laden saw as our weakness and thus lead to 9/11), these elements knew they could regroup there with no worries of us returning. Now, 10+ years past, we have a terrorist haven akin to Afghanistan in the late 1990's. They are implementing Sharia law and threatening their neighbors. As of this moment, militant Islam is spreading through not only Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia, but Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and other African nations. It will reach Egypt, a country that has barely held it off and one in which Ayman al-Zawahiri really has his sights set on.

This is what Iraq will be if we retreat and leave now. If we bail out before we finish the job, we will face a situation one thousand times more harrowing then at present. We would be shirking our responsibility by cutting and running and leaving this generation's battles to the next.