Why preemption makes sense

The AP is reporting that almost every major terrorist attack since (and including) 9/11 have one thing in common: Those who did them trained in al Queda or affiliated camps in Afghanistan. The numbers are staggering:

Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are believed to have trained at Afghan camps since 1996, when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan, said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Since the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Rishkhor and other al-Qaida camps have mostly been reduced to rubble, but the men who trained in them — including, allegedly, the two Turkish suicide bombers who detonated last week's synagogue explosions — are still pursuing their legacy of death.

Those who argue against the Iraq war on the grounds that Hussein hadn't done anything yet, take note: Preemption is hardly an insane idea. A few dozen good sized missles into the aforementioned Afghan camps in 1998 might have prevented 9/11. There's no guarantee of that, of course, and we can't go around bombing everyone who looks sideways at us. But when we see a regime engaging in fangerous activity with the explicit goal of being able to kill as many Americans as possible, it hardly rewrites international relations to suggest we ought to do something about it. It seems to me that that is the lesson of 9/11, and I for one am glad Bush learned it. Now we just need to get everyone else on board, beginning perhaps with Kim Jung Il . . .
- posted by Anonymous @ 5:46 PM