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To counter your counterpoints, Joel:

* Al Qaeda may think it's at war with us in Iraq, but we're the ones who provided them with the battlefield.

And this is bad -- from an American perspective -- how? I'd rather we draw them out in the open and fight them, which is what has happened. And thanks to the "flypaper strategy" that is playing out in Iraq, we will hand them a great strategic defeat. Their dreams of propping up a pillar of the caliphate in Iraq are over. And that will have a great negative psychological effect on the cause.

* Iraqis seem to be more than capable of driving out Al Qaeda on their own; that's what has been happening in the Anbar Awakening, right? They might need our guns, but I'm not sure they need us -- and frankly they can probably get the guns anyway.

They are capable -- now, after we've trained them up and helped make driving out al-Qaida a new, national cause. Eventually, they will only need our guns. And we will happily provide them in lieu of a large troop presence to our new ally -- an anti-Islamist and free Iraq.

* "Doing a great job killing them" works, mainly, if you're facing off against a nation-state army that it is possible to decimate. As we saw in Vietnam, the old body count metrics don't really work that well in a war of counterinsurgency.

Have to grant you some points here. Body count metrics don't really work that well in a counterinsurgency. Though since the anti-war faction -- in the U.S. and abroad -- counts American bodies, I'll count enemy bodies. It's not fair to have one-way metrics.

And, as is discussed in The Looming Tower, keeping up morale is vital to al-Qaida's cause. That morale has ebbed and flowed over the years. And it cannot, and will not, be good for morale and recruitment when they are defeated (nay, slaughtered) in Iraq. A keystone of bin Laden's recruitment efforts has been portraying himself as the "strong horse" compared to the "weak horse" of America and Western society as a whole. That camel don't hunt so well when the ascendent "strong horse" keeps trampling over the jihadists.

* Facing Al Qaeda in Iraq might be a benefit to us, but it's hardly been a benefit to Iraqis

True, that. But the alternative -- another generation terrorized by the Hussein clan -- is hardly rosy. At least the Iraqis have a brighter long-term future now than they did five years ago.

Really, Howard? That's funny, because our enemies -- al-Qaida -- think they're at war with us in Iraq. They've said so, many times.

One of the benefits of our presence in Iraq is that the enemy is pursuing us -- in Iraq. And we're doing a great job of killing them.

Howard, you may be right that the Bush administration is not pursuing al-Qaida as vigorously as it ought to. Out of curiosity, though, what specifically would you suggest Bush -- or the next president -- do? Apart from ending the occupation in Iraq, I mean, which is clear from your post. What about sending the CIA or special operations forces into the Waziristan province of Pakistan? What about airstrikes? Or something else?

Thanks for posting, and for joining the conversation.