Paging Elliott Ness

Along with the Democrat japes about the potential of bringing down Hussein without a fight, there's a persistent nagging from the left that, because Bin Laden may still be alive and on the lam, Bush's mission in Afghanistan is a failure.

Now, it doesn't take a military history buff to know that the leader is not synonymous with his organization (but then, the Democrats don't seem to have any military history buffs in their ranks). Short of destroying the organization, the main goal is disrupting their ability to harm us. Bagging any individual member of the group is, at most, a tertiary issue.

Bin Laden's a priority, says Jim Miller in NRO. Especially a political priority.

Last week, Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle went on the offensive: "I think we have to question whether or not we're winning the war. We haven't found bin Laden. We haven't made any real progress in many of the other areas involving the key elements of Al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were a year and a half ago. I don't want to proclaim that it's not successful, but I think there are increasing questions about whether or not the administration can legitimately say we are winning the war."

It was a shrewd statement, making clever use of CIA director George Tenet's recent congressional testimony, which seemed to contradict Bush's "on-the-run" rhetoric: "The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer, the summer before 9/11." Daschle also engages in redirection: "I don't want to proclaim..." Then he goes ahead and proclaims it.

Having Bin Laden on the loose may or may not be a military threat in and of itself, if his organization has been driven underground and is incapable of striking us. But Bin Laden is certainly a danger to the President - at the hands of his own opposition at home, anyway.

Posted by Mitch at November 18, 2002 11:17 AM