Andrew Sullivan is seriously deluded:

One of the many layers of the arguments for invading Iraq focused on the difficulties of waging a serious war on terror from a distant remove. Being based in Iraq helpsus [sic] notonly [sic]because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere.

By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs’ [sic]. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn’t always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.

It’s true that Hussein was a big financial supporter of Palestinian terrorist groups, but the people attacking U.S. forces in Iraq right now may be many things, but they’re not the terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11 and they’re not the terrorists we had any cause to take over a country for.

And to say that we’re actually in a better position now is absolutely ludicrous. A base in Iraq might make it easier for the United States to wage war on terror in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc., but U.S. occupation is itself the proximate cause of Iraqi terrorism — in this case, perhaps legitimately labeled rebellion — against the men and women who came to win a war, and now want to go home.

(Also posted to Circle Bastiat.)