Matt "Angel" Duss vs. Michael "Titty Boy" Goldfarb on the question of taking on al-Qaeda where it is. We’ve seen the right run this play in 2004: Kerry attacked Bush for disinterest in al-Qaeda; Bush and friends rejoindered that the war on terrorism is bigger than al-Qaeda. It was a massively effective argument, politically. The right sounds bold, decisive, world-beating, take-on-all-comers, while substantively being so fucking stupid it might as well consist of active agents of al-Qaeda.

What McCain is refusing to do is assent to the idea that al-Qaeda must be destroyed where it actually exists. It isn’t a trivial thing when the senior U.S. intelligence analyst for transnational threats reports that al-Qaeda has strengthened its Pakistani safe haven. The U.S. has a first-order security interest in eliminating — I mean, noneuphemistically, killing or capturing — al-Qaeda’s senior leadership (to use the intelligence parlance) in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. These are people with a proven capability to strike the U.S. and a vow to do so again. To decline to go after them while we see them getting stronger while prolonging an occupation that isn’t in our interests and degrades our financial, military and intelligence capabilities ought to be a disqualification for being president. Maybe the ad Obama should cut ought to be titled McCain Has Forgotten 9/11.