Perhaps I’m watching too much television, but Bush’s constant reiteration of the “if we pull out of Iraq, they will follow us home” line (which he just did again at the VFW convention today) started me thinking about a strategy he is ignoring.
If we are so sure that Al Q. is just sitting there waiting for us to head back to the country they despise so much for its freedom, then we must know something about their plans. Certainly, Bush has access to secret confidence information about Osama’s meetings with his planning team on how they intend to do this “following.” Otherwise, why would he keep making this fear-inducing statement?
So, If we know how they plan to follow us, why don’t we approach it like Dr. House approaches a hard-to-pinpoint disease: instead of keeping up the medication, he let’s the patient get sicker, then the disease is clear and he can go in and kill it. In that sense, Bush should bring the troops home, but secretly use that tactic to lay a trap for the Arab terrorists and when they follow us, we’ll be ready and we’ll jump them as they arrive!
Of course, if they don’t follow us home and we sit and wait for them to do so, the side effect will be a safe country. Gee, we don’t want to do that, do we? Better to keep our troops over there where they can slowly be exhausted by extended stays and gradually be picked off by IEDs in a, what do you call it?, civil war?
This “setting a trap” strategy seems so obvious… I guess Bush doesn’t watch TV.