President Bush Ratcheting Up Fight Against al-Qaeda

I've been saying since spring that President Bush has stepped up his efforts to neutralize al-Qaeda in the belief that an Obama administration would curtail or shut down offensive operations that have kept us from being attacked again and repeatedly.

The New Republic has the story and Bush seems to have been even more aggressive than I'd hoped:

...In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush's personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the "Chicago Way," an allusion to Sean Connery's famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

The new order could pave the way for direct action in Kenya, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen--all places where the American intelligence believe al Qaeda has a significant presence, but can no longer count on the indigenous security services to act. In the parlance of the Cold War, Petraeus will now have the authority to fight a regional "dirty war." When queried about the order from July, deputy spokesman for the National Security Council Ben Chang offered no comment.

Of course, TNR looks at this as a bad thing but I look at it as a President who has done everything within his power to keep the nation safe continuing to do just that. Obama will most-certainly reduce our presence in Iraq and in spite of his blustery rhetoric will cut back in Afghanistan as well. These are the central fronts in the War on Terror and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Should Obama win, he will rescind this order the first day and our military will be hamstrung if they receive actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda, al-Quds or Hezbollah movements against US interests.

To the liberal left, the only thing that will matter on January 20, 2009 is the immediate restructuring of our domestic policies. Foreign policy will get in the way of the Great Society II and will have to take a back seat.

I'm sure that al-Qaeda and others who wish to harm us will take notice and Iran will continue their quest to become the regional power unabated.