redblueamerica.com

I wouldn't believe it if I didn't read it with my own eyes. The anti-war editorial board of The Washington Post published an editorial today warning against relying on the kind of "over the horizon" strategy Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama advocate for fighting the war on Islamic terrorists.

The Post editorial board lauded the killing of a major al-Qaida leader in Somalia this week by Tomahawk missile. Indeed, this leading light of liberal opinion called the strike "a victory for the Bush administration's counterterrorism operations in Africa," and even employed the word "evildoer" without sneering irony. Be still my heart!

But, as the Post noted, it was a victory that came with some drawbacks:

At least two dozen other people were killed in the attack, some of them apparently civilians.

Well, yes. Even the most technologically advanced military in history cannot completely eliminate collateral damage in the form of people we did not wish dead. But, to the paper's credit, they did not raise that fact up as a reason to condemn the strike.

What is extraordinary is The Washington Post's point that pin-prick strikes via missiles launched from "over the horizon" on a Navy ship is not a winning long-term strategy in this long war. And they point to Somalia — beset by famine, chaos and al-Qaida since Bill Clinton retreated after Black Hawk Down — as a lesson we should not forget as we plot out our Iraq policy going forward.

Somalia is a cautionary example for those who, like Barack Obama, favor rapidly withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq and managing any threat from al-Qaeda with an "over the horizon" strike force. Such forces indeed have the ability to target and kill leaders. They do nothing, however, to change the conditions under which al-Qaeda finds refuge and recruits. As Gen. David H. Petraeus is demonstrating in Iraq, successful counterterrorism requires providing security for the civilian population, economic reconstruction and the brokering of political accords -- in other words, nation-building. That's as true in Somalia as it is in Iraq.

Exactly right. A right-leaning editorial board might have spent a paragraph outlining in more detail the irresponsible retreat promises of the Democrats — and hitting them a little harder for it. But that's a minor quibble.

Cheers to The Washington Post editorial board for being among the few liberal outlets to openly recognize the presence of evil in the world and the necessity of countering it with deadly force rather than negotiation. And, even more importantly, implicitly acknowledging that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror.