Today’s NY Times editorial talks about the diversion of resources from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the prosecution of the Iraq war.

The editorial concludes with…

Having failed to finish off Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Washington now finds itself fighting Qaeda-affiliated groups on multiple fronts, most recently in Somalia. Al Qaeda’s comeback in Pakistan is a devastating indictment of Mr. Bush’s grievously flawed strategies and misplaced Iraq obsession. Unless the president changes course, the dangers to America and its friends will continue to multiply.

Reading the editorial brought to mind several items. First, wasn’t this exactly what JK said during the presidential debates in 2004?

During the 1st debate, JK stated:

The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it.

The president made the judgment to divert forces from under General Tommy Franks from Afghanistan before the Congress even approved it to begin to prepare to go to war in Iraq.

And he rushed the war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace. Now, that is not the judgment that a president of the United States ought to make. You don’t take America to war unless have the plan to win the peace. You don’t send troops to war without the body armor that they need.

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… Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn’t use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world’s number one criminal and terrorist.

They outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who only a week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us, neither of whom trusted each other.

That’s the enemy that attacked us. That’s the enemy that was allowed to walk out of those mountains. That’s the enemy that is now in 60 countries, with stronger recruits.

When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, “Where is Osama bin Laden? ” He said, “I don’t know. I don’t really think about him very much. I’m not that concerned. “

We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.

In his speech at Georgetown University on October 26, 2005, JK warned us again:

We will never be as safe as we should be if Iraq continues to distract us from the most important war we must win—the war on Osama Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the terrorists that are resurfacing even in Afghanistan.

In March of 2006 at a speech about “Security in a Dangerous World” at the University of Ulster in Ireland , JK expanded on the topic of what faces us:

Frankly, we should start by better understanding what we are up against. The war on terror – as it is so often called – even exploited — is really a far bigger challenge than the words suggest. Terror is only a tactic. The bigger struggle we are engaged in is much more than a military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it started long before 9/11. It is, above all, a much more complicated undertaking than some have made it sound. In fact, our long-term security is today as it has always been, dependent on addressing the multi-layered fabric of life which motivates those who use terror.

In his “Dissent” speech given on April 22, 2006 in Faneuil Hall, JK pointed out step by step how current administration policies have fueled Al Qaeda, rather than suppressed it.

The raw justification for abandoning so many American traditions exposes the real danger of the Bush-Cheney Doctrine. We all understand we are in a long struggle against jihadist extremism. It does represent a threat to our vital security interests and our values. Even the Bush-Cheney Administration acknowledges this is preeminently an ideological war, but that’s why the Bush-Cheney Doctrine is so ill-equipped to fight and win it.

Our enemies argue that all our claims about advancing universal principles of human rights and mutual respect disguise a raw demand for American dominance. They gain every time we tolerate or cover up abuses of human rights in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, or among sectarian militias in Iraq, and especially when we defiantly disdain the rules of international law.

Our enemies argue that our invasion and occupation of Iraq reflect an obsession with oil supplies and commercial opportunities. They gain when our president and vice president, both former oil company executives, continue to pursue an oil-based energy strategy, and provide vast concessions in Iraq to their corporate friends.

And so there’s the crowning irony: the Bush-Cheney Doctrine holds that many of our great traditions cannot be maintained; yet the Bush-Cheney policies, by abandoning those traditions, give Osama bin Laden and his associates exactly what they want and need to reinforce their hate-filled ideology of Islamic solidarity against the western world.

During that same time period, Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail, started sounding the alarm about Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr. Roggio (bio) is a veteran and a reporter who’s done 3 rounds of embed, 1st in Iraq in 2005, then in Afghanistan in 2006 and most recently, again in Iraq in Dec. 2006 and Jan. 2007.

In September of 2006, he put together a summary of all the posts that he’s written sounding the alarm about the rise of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan called “The Fall of Waziristan: An Online History”.

What’s the date of the first post in his summary? January 10, 2006, titled “The Waziristan Problem”. Roggio has consistently reported on what’s happening in the Waziristan area of Pakistan throughout 2006. He has continued to maintain this particular blog post as a reference point with links to all of his reporting concerning the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Waziristan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is another valuable reference point for those interested in seeking out information.

On September 14, 2006, JK delivered a speech titled “Winning the Central Front in the War on Terror: Afghanistan” at Howard University:

The President pretends Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. It is not now, and never has been. The truth is, his disastrous decisions have made Iraq a fuel depot for terror – fanning the flames of conflict around the world.

There is simply no way to overstate how Iraq has subverted our efforts to free the world from global terror. It has overstretched our military. It has served as an essential recruitment tool for terrorists. It has divided and pushed away our traditional allies. It has diverted critical billions of dollars from the real front lines against terrorism and from homeland security. It has unleashed dangerous, pent-up forces of radical religious extremism. It has weakened moderate leaders in the Middle East. It has strengthened and played into Iran’s hand. It has diminished our moral authority in the world.

The demagogic drumbeat about fighting terrorists over there instead of here — even though they weren’t in Iraq until we went in, and it’s now a civil war we’re fighting — has compromised America’s real interests and made us less safe than we ought to be five years after 9/11. The true measure of that is the stark fact that worldwide terrorist attacks are at an all-time high and there are now more terrorists in the world who want to kill Americans than there were at the time of 9/11.

After all the tough talk of “Wanted Dead or Alive,” after the Administration bragged and boasted – they meekly backed off in the mountains of Tora Bora. Osama bin Laden escaped because the administration held back the best military in the world – our’s – and outsourced the job to local militias. Since then Al Qaeda has spawned a vast and decentralized network operating in 65 countries. Only Dick Cheney could call this a success.

The situation in Afghanistan deteriorates steadily, squandering the sacrifices of our troops and allies in the military campaign of 2002. The Taliban now controls entire portions of southern Afghanistan, and just across the border Pakistan is just one coup away from becoming a radical jihadist state with a full compliment of nuclear weapons. Only Don Rumsfeld could proclaim this a victory.

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This is the reality of the world today – a world more dangerous because of the Bush blunders and a challenge far more complicated than the gruff Cheney sound bites. America deserves – our safety depends—on a winning strategy to reverse this dangerous course and make our country more secure.

There are five principal priorities that demand immediate action: (1) redeploy from Iraq, (2) re-commit to Afghanistan, (3) reduce our dependence on foreign oil, (4) reinforce our homeland defense, and (5) restore America’s moral leadership in the world. These “5 R’s”—if you want to call them that– are bold steps Democrats will take to strengthen our national security, and that the Republicans who have set the agenda today resist to our national peril.

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The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this Administration treats it like a sideshow. When did denying al Qaeda a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority? How did we end up with seven times more troops in Iraq – which even the Administration now admits had nothing to do with 9/11 – than in Afghanistan, where the killers still roam free? Why is the Administration sending thousands more American troops into the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq but we can’t find any more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

You could get whiplash watching the Administration policy on Afghanistan change from day to day. On Sunday, asked which of the 26 countries in the alliance were dragging their feet in Afghanistan, NATO’s top commander General James Jones, a four-star general and former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, replied, “All of them.” Tuesday, Secretary Rice said we’ll “pay for it” if Afghanistan again devolves into a terrorist stronghold. But just yesterday the Administration refused to heed its own warnings and refused to send the troops the commanders on the ground said we needed. That is both a tragedy and a scandal. And today? Silence.

The Administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run. Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.

There’s more but I’ll let you go back and read it for yourself. I do strongly encourage a second look at Bill Roggio’s reports. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give a hat tip to The Democratic Daily for the terrific resource they’ve provided in their collection of JK’s complete speeches and statements.

But let’s go back to where I started. Remember I said that reading the NYT editorial raised several thoughts in my mind. Here is the first one, and it’s a question for the New York Times editorial board:

What took you so long?

You even had a direct clue from your reporter Matt Bai and his profile of JK in October 2004,

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America - and certainly in Washington - had been changed by that day. ... What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism … He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists.