Commentary - Robert Cox: Iraq is where the terrorists are now

Sutton robbed more than 100 banks in the course of a criminal career that spanned four decades, from the late 1920s until 1952, when he was arrested for the last time. But Sutton is even more well-known for a line that was famously — and falsely — credited to him.

The legend goes that when Sutton was asked during a newspaper interview why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Sutton later adopted the line attributed to him by that enterprising reporter as the title for his 1976 autobiography, “Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber,” and the legend became fact. Sutton was proud that the line attributed to him became shorthand for suggesting people look for the most obvious answer first.

The case is often made these days (especially by my friends on the left) that because the majority of Americans surveyed in opinion polls do not support a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, the Bush administration should “listen to the people” and bring U.S. troops home. The same people advancing this argument point to each American and Iraqi casualty as “proving” that the U.S. should withdraw.

When challenged on their position, many of these same people will claim that they are not “anti-war” but “anti-this war,” invariably adding that they supported the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks because that’s where the people who attacked us were.

According to recent Department of Defense and CIA estimates, al Qaeda now has between 5,000 and 20,000 fighters operating in Iraq. Al Qaeda itself claims to have as many as 12,000 fighters in Iraq, but do we really want to take Osama bin Laden’s word for anything? While no one in this country knows for sure just how many jihadists are in Iraq, it seems reasonable to believe that there are thousands of them — making Iraq home to the single largest concentration of al Qaeda members in the world.

In a tape released last fall shortly after the U.S. mid-term elections, a man who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir said, “The al Qaeda army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, and they have vowed to die for God’s sake.” He also said there were another 10,000 unequipped fighters ready to join them.

So it would seem that however it may have happened, the people who were responsible for Sept. 11 have now massed their forces in Iraq. All of which raises a question: If the U.S. were to withdraw all of its forces from the Middle East tomorrow and were to suddenly learn that al Qaeda had assembled 10,000 to 20,000 armed jihadists in Madagascar, Paraguay or Antarctica, what would most Americans expect President Bush to do about it?

I would like to propose that polling organizations consider adding a few new questions to their next survey, such as:

» Would you support the United States going to war in a country that was found to be a base of operations for many thousands of al Qaeda members?

» If the United States were engaged in armed conflict with al Qaeda fighters in a particular country, would you support withdrawing U.S. troops before the jihadists had been defeated and driven out of that country?

» Which country has the largest number of al Qaeda fighters in the world? Should the United States be engaged militarily in that country?

While no American wants to see U.S. troops put in harm’s way, it seems unlikely that a majority of Americans would support exiting Iraq if they fully understood how large a presence al Qaeda now has there, how that compares with its presence elsewhere in the world, and just how much manpower and resources our enemy has put into Iraq.

To my friends on the anti-war left, I ask simply this: If we are not going to fight al Qaeda in Iraq when we know it is there, then where and when do they propose we should fight it?

To paraphrase Willie Sutton: You fight al Qaeda in Iraq because that’s where al Qaeda is.

Robert Cox is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and is president of the Media Bloggers Association.