Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas today writes, among other things:
Do any of them [liberals] seriously believe that if the United States were to prematurely withdraw from Iraq, al-Qaida and Iran would not take advantage of the resulting power vacuum and establish a terrorist state from which even more horrible attacks could be launched against the United States and American interests worldwide?
One wonders where Thomas has been hiding his head since 9/11. He apparently still does not understand that the differences between Shi'ite and Sunni Moslem in the Middle East are at least as great as those between Catholic and Protestant Christian in Northern Ireland. al-Qaida and Iran? There is no "and". Were we to turn over peacekeeping in Iraq to the Iranian army today, the immediate result would be a severe increase in suffering among innocent Sunnis in Iraq, probably followed by Saudi intervention to protect them; but there would be no cooperation between al-Qaida and Iran to establish a "terrorist state" — or towards any other common goal, either, Iran and al-Qaida having no common goals.
More likely, the result would be the equivalent of having a couple of scorpions in a bottle. Which, in my humble opinion, would be no better than the current situation, but would certainly not be the united anti-American front that Thomas posits.