The sentence meant exactly what it says. The enemy is, and always has been, bigger than just Baathist Iraqis. Iraq is not the whole war, and never has been.

I have been hearing a lot about how we would be much safer if we had not invaded Iraq. This is what the sentence refutes. Had we never invaded Iraq, the jihad would have been against us for invading Afghanistan alone. And we had troops in neither nation on 9/11. If we withdrew from Iraq tomorrow, the same bastards pouring into Iraq from Syria and Iran would pour into Afghanistan. And if we left there, it would just be to wait for the next attack on America.

I won't even try to go over documenting the Iraq/terror connections yet again. It's like pissing into the wind, anymore. But you don't have to believe any of that to know that the war at some point would still have had to go beyond Afghanistan. Maybe not this year, or the next. Maybe, like George H. W. Bush or Clinton, the problem could have been pushed down the road. But it would have become necessary eventually. Maybe it would have been Iran instead of Iraq. Or Syria. Or God help us, Pakistan. And there would have been American deaths, terror bombings, and insurgents, no matter where the next battlefield was. And the American peace movement would have dutifully opposed each and every one. So it goes.

Have you ever wondered why al Qaeda and other Islamists are moving into Iraq in force to fight us? Did you ever wonder why they aren't putting the same effort into Afghanistan to face the much smaller forces there, if they have no concern over a liberated Iraq, and the goal is just to defeat us?