They're Thinking, "Uh, Oh..."

From The New York Times:

Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Obama’s vision for winding down the war on terrorism, using talk show appearances to accuse him of misunderstanding the threat in a way that will embolden unfriendly nations.

“We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine.”

Republicans haven't learned one damned thing in the last 22 years: they are still being duped by the Iranians and the terrorists. What motivated bin Laden to blow up American embassies and fly planes into American buildings? The massively unpopular presence of US military forces in Saudi Arabia, left there after the 1991 Gulf War, which ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

What motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to bomb the Boston Marathon? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What motivated the underwear bomber? A desire for religious jihad to protest the continued killings of Muslims in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In all of these cases, terrorists attacked the United States because they felt that we were fighting unjust wars against Muslims or maintaining an unnecessary military presence in their countries. Did we need to station troops in Saudi Arabia, even though we knew our bases there were wildly unpopular with Saudis? No: George W. Bush very quietly pulled them out in 2003. Many of them went to Kuwait, where there was actual public support for their presence as protection against Saddam.

After 9/11 pretty much the entire world was on America's side, and applauded our invasion of Afghanistan. But W. blew all that good will, first by letting bin Laden escape at Tora Bora through incompetent management of the initial phases of the war there, and then by being duped by Iranian agents like Ahmad Chalabi and the infamous Curveball, who gave Bush phony stories of WMDs in Iraq.

The Iranians manipulated the Bush administration into invading Iraq, thereby eliminating their greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and saddling the United States with two simultaneous wars that will ultimately cost this nation $2 trillion. The Iraq war proved to be the greatest recruiting tool Al Qaeda ever had. And today Iraq is ruled by a Shiite regime friendly to Iran.

Bush and the Republicans let the Iranians lead them around by the nose. Bush should have finished bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 instead of immediately distracting himself with Iraq and letting bin Laden escape to live in luxury with his wives outside Abottabad in Pakistan.

We should have got in, got 'er done, and got out, instead of letting the Afghan war drag out into the longest war in the history of this nation. It should have been obvious from the get-go that a long war is unwinnable: the Soviet Union's 10-year long invasion of Afghanistan was probably the greatest contributor to its breakdown.

Had we not invaded Iraq in 2003 terrorist attacks in the US, Spain, Britain -- and Boston -- would never have occurred. Thousands of American military personnel would not have died. Hundreds of thousands would not have suffered horrible mutilations and PTSD.

Had we pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia after clobbering Saddam in 1991 bin Laden would not have attacked us on 9/11.

If we had not been caught up in Afghanistan and Iraq the North Koreans might not have dared develop nuclear weapons because the wars so severely limited America's options. Indeed, without Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech and invasion of Iraq, it's quite possible that the North Koreans and the Iranians would not have felt they were going to be invaded next, and wouldn't have felt an urgent need to go nuclear.

Again and again, in their desire to appear strong and resolute and to project power into places where we were simply not wanted or were not specifically needed for our long-term goals, Republicans have only caused foreigners to needlessly hate this country. By frittering away trillions of dollars on pointless and very public wars against "terrorism," Republicans have elevated terrorist criminals like bin Laden to Muslim war heroes and martyrs.

If we weren't fighting giant wars killing lots of Muslims, Middle Eastern governments might find it a lot easier to cooperate with us on catching terrorists who have killed far more Muslims than they have Americans. The NSA, CIA and the FBI should be quietly hunting down these dogs, capturing them with as little "collateral damage" as possible. Then we should very publicly try them like the spineless murderers they are. But when American conservatives dignify these criminals as "jihadis" -- a derogatory term in the minds of Fox News viewers, but a badge of honor to Muslims -- they are only falling into the terrorists' propaganda trap.

So to answer Graham's question: after Obama's speech the Iranians are probably thinking, "Uh, oh... Looks like the bull isn't going to be lead around by the nose anymore."