A Sensless Distinction

Andrew McCarthy of NRO makes a good, but largely irrelevant point:

Senator Clinton has joined her Democratic colleague, Senator Robert Byrd, in penning an extraordinary op-ed, published in Tuesday’s New York Daily News. The excuse du jour for not taking on al Qaeda in Iraq, where it is massed? Iraq is not about al Qaeda. Iraq is “a civil war nobody voted for.”...

Iraq is a civil war? Why, because Sunnis are killing Shiites? Sectarian infighting there is not a civil war; it’s a strategy. The Sunnis orchestrating the killing are not Iraqis. They are al Qaeda.

He then goes on to cite evidence of his claim. I don't follow the goings-on in Iraq terribly closely, but his thesis seems credible. The only problem is that it's entirely beside the point.

Even if the Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other because al Qaeda is compelling them to--which they've been doing on and off since 670 anyway--this still doesn't explain how our mission, to get them to play nice, can possibly succeed. Nor does it consider the fact that if we can get the Sunnis and Shiites to stop killing each other and unite in a lovely democracy, this may still not be in our best interests. History says that Muslims don't ever really stop fighting. It's either each other or the infidel, and, being a proud infidel, I'd just as soon have them fight each other.

Hillary is going anti-war at about the right time to deceive enough of the electorate to become Queen. That other candidates, notably Ron Paul, have been anti-war since the get go is, unfortunately, beside the point. But if the Lizard Queen has it figured out, the NRO staffers don't. Staying the course isn't going to improve our lot, no matter how long we stay. It'd be best to get those troops home on the morrow.