Press Release: Conrad, Dorgan To Introduce Legislation To Re-Form Bin Laden CIA Unit

Just another example of how liberal Democrats don't understand the war on terror.

As I wrote previously when the disbanding of the bin Laden unit was announced:

Critics of President Bush's anti-terror policies like to harp on the fact that we haven't caught or killed Osama bin Laden yet, but this is something of a canard. Those people are just using bin Laden as a political weapon against Bush. The reality of the war on terror is that Islamic terrorism is not a single nation with a single army and a single leader. While killing or capturing terror leaders like Zarqawi and bin Laden are certainly worthy and important goals, achieving those goals will not bring us overall victory in the war on terror. They can help, but this isn't a game of chess where capturing the "king" brings us instant victory.

Fighting terror means fighting an ideology. You don't fight an ideology by killing that ideology's leaders. Doing so only turns those leaders into sainted martyrs for the ideology's faithful. Instead, you fight an ideology by changing the conditions that create adherents to the ideology in the first place.

Islamic terrorism springs from the oppressive, fundamentalist rule Muslims have lived under in the middle east for centuries. By toppling oppressive regimes in the middle east and replacing them with governments that rule at the will of the people we end the conditions that breed terrorists.

I'd add also that simply because the unit that was tasked exclusively with finding bin Laden has been disbanded doesn't mean that we're not still hunting for him. We are, but we're also recognizing that putting too many eggs in one basket is foolish. Osama bin Laden is not the beginning and end of Islamic terrorism. There are other threats too, and our President and military/intelligence forces must protect us from all of them.