Saturday, January 19, 2013

Global Wild Goose Chase

Wall Street Journal editorial --

Between his Inaugural address Monday and the State of the Union speech next month, we hope President Obama finds space to include some comments on Algeria. And Mali. And Benghazi. This isn't an attempt at foreign-policy snark. It's an effort to see the world as it is. Mr. Obama of late has been doing what can only be described as a mission-accomplished riff on Iraq and Afghanistan, announcing last week an accelerated timetable for getting U.S. troops out of the Afghan theater.

Which is pretty close to being self-refuting. What's the value of ever having sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq if Al Qaeda just popped back up in North Africa?