War on terrorism belongs to cops

The war on terror is a cop’s war. It’s not a soldier’s war.

Every time the cops have been tested, they’ve come through. Every time an army has been sent in to make things better, things get worse.

It was cops and secret cops who saved airplanes from blowing up over the Atlantic. This war is a crime war. The kind of war cops and supercops deal with best.

We got this war wrong almost from the beginning. And it’s still horribly wrong today.

We ought to be on a cop manhunt for thugs. The crime against us was Sept. 11. And Osama bin Laden was public enemy No. 1.

At first we went after him. America was united then. It was Osama we wanted, dead or alive.

Nobody opposed our effort. Five years ago, America spoke with one voice. We wanted to go get him and drag him back and try him and shoot him. But he gave us the slip.

What we should have done then was keep boring in. We knew where bin Laden was hiding. He was in that bleak, mountainous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I guess he still is. So the cops or the supercops – our precision Delta force – should have gone to find him.

There certainly was no indication he was anywhere near Iraq. Iraq would have viewed him as too hot to handle. But, lacking any proof that Iraq had attacked America, we attacked Iraq. And loused up what was left of the manhunt.

And now we’re stuck in Iraq. Stuck in a civil war. And for no good reason. Our presence there screws up the hunt for justice. We have made bin Laden stronger. We have further inflamed the whole Middle East. We are working against ourselves.

We have lost what small clout we had in the region. Instead of breathing life on a wistful ember of Rose Garden diplomacy, we blew it out.

Our Middle East policy, fragile always, has been trampled beneath the boots of our reluctant Army. We are, once again, in the wrong place for the wrong reason at the wrong time. With a new generation of blind boobs to lead us.

Either the commander in chief is a fool (which may be possible) or, led blindly by his acolytes, he thirsted for a full-scale Armageddon in the Middle East. A crusade he thought would be easily won.

By now he must know that nothing is won easily in the Middle East. By now he must know that we are losing. Iraq was never ours to win. We are in the middle of a civil war, which is a place we don’t want to be. But he’s too stubborn to pull out. Yet. Sooner or later he’s going to have to. But, when it comes to ending the killing, everything takes too long. There are always too many people on Capitol Hill who won’t admit their mistakes. Even if they are written in blood.

It’s never their blood.

There was no reason on earth to fight a soldier’s war in Iraq. The war on terror is a cop’s war. It’s a war against organized crime.

And ever since the crumbling of the Towers, the cops have performed magnificently. Right up to and including the busts in Britain that may have prevented thugs and terrorists from using their favorite method of mass destruction. Airplanes.

It seems to me that the American war on terror is a failure. We went into Iraq and kicked over an anthill. And now, we’re trying to save face and look for the exit. We look bad. We should.

The only connection between the Iraq war and the war on terror is that the Iraq war – Bush’s war – is making things worse.

The cops are the heroes who never get credit. This week, they should. They are our homeland security. And always have been.