Obama Plan Won't Make America Safer

President Obama should have used his speech to declare victory and announce the start of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of an escalation, writes Eugene Robinson. Even if the surge achieves its immediate mission—at huge cost—the operation won't achieve its ultimate goal of making the US safer from terrorist attacks because al-Qaeda can easily set up shop in states like Somalia or Yemen, Robinson argues in the Washington Post.

Al-Qaeda's murderous ideology can erupt anywhere, including on a military base in the middle of Texas, Robinson writes. The ideas and techniques behind terrorism simply can't be defeated by force of arms. "George W. Bush chose a path toward a more or less permanent state of costly, deadly, low-level war," Robinson writes. "Barack Obama should have taken a different course." (More Eugene Robinson stories.)