With Al Qaeda having already stated it's plan to entangle us in the Middle East and thus bleed our economy white, it's clear that the expansion of the war into Iran would suit that goal nicely.  Bin Laden and his lieutenants understood the strategy of avoiding set-piece battles and bleeding the Russians in a 10-year war of attrition, the only way to bring down a superpower.  So a vote for the Kyl-Lieberman declaration of war on Iran is a vote for Al Qaeda.

This Al Qaeda strategy also includes American support of corrupt Middle Eastern regimes, which fuels popular resentment and eventually causes them to fall.  With worldwide revulsion at 9/11 taking its toll on bin Laden's popularity, it was up to George Bush to overplay his hand.  

This he did nicely.  Now bin Laden is taking advantage of our being bogged down in Iraq, and the inflamed anti-American climate the occupation has caused.  It's time for Osama to send Bush a big rum-soaked fruit cake for allowing him to go forward perfectly according to plan in Pakistan, even as we contemplate war with Iran.

Three years ago the New Republic detailed what a Kerry master plan to fight Al Qaeda might look like, had he been elected:

"One, we want to ensure that Afghanistan doesn't  again become a sanctuary [said a senior Kerry advisor.]  And two, we want to  ensure that the fundamentalists who have gained political power in the Northwest Frontier  Province and who have some degree of allegiance to bin Laden don't become a more dominant  political movement in Pakistan more generally."

Bin Laden's new call for his fighters to focus their efforts squarely on Pakistan, where Musharaff is tottering like a Weeble, is the strongest vindication yet of the scenario that the CIA's Michael Scheuer warned us about.  Scheuer said the invasion of Iraq was the "gift" to bin Laden that he wouldn't have hoped for in his wildest dreams.

"And then, dreamed bin Laden wildly,  things would get bad for the Americans.  They  would stay too long in Iraq, insist on installing a  democracy that would subordinate the long  dominant Sunnis, vigorously limit Islam's role in  government, and act in ways that spotlighted their  interest in Iraq's massive oil reserves. - Scheuer in "Imperial Hubris"

Bin Laden envisioned a U.S. "over-reaction" to the 9/11 attacks, which would dry up world sympathy and cooperation in the wake of the attacks.  Bin Laden's hope was that enough anti-American fuel would be produced to keep the war going long after he, and even Bush, were dead, which would eventually result in the overthrow of "apostate" regimes, like Pakistan's.  It required but one true ally: an American president incapable of grasping anything but the sole use of force as the solution to all problems.  

In the same New Republic article, (republished in of all places, FreeRepublic, as scary a bunch of rightwing knuckle-draggers as you'll find), Joe Biden hinted at the foreign policy competence that might have been shown by the otherwise politically incompetent Kerry:

"What I think you would see is John  Kerry doing everything he can to build a greater  consensus worldwide that will allow us, if need be,  to even consider using force in conjunction with  the Pakistanis against Al Qaeda in Pakistan."

In other words, the post-9/11 capital squandered by Bush in Iraq might have been used to build the unified international front required to employ massive force in southern Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas, in pursuit of bin Laden and the surviving Al Qaeda leadership.  Combined with a diplomatic offensive to address grievances with America in the region, Al Qaeda's head of steam would be deflated.  But of course, such a strategy would require us to confront the lie, as Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has confronted, that "they" hate us for our "freedoms."  If they hate us for "who we are" instead of "what we do," in Scheuer's words, then any attempt to address grievances is pure appeasement.

How do we get back to safety, and a war on terrorism that does not last into our grandchildren's time?  Unfortunately, at this stage in the game the battleground is the world's fundamental perception of the previously beloved American character, untouched since World War II, even throughout the CIA's history of bloody Third World coups.  No one blamed us for George Bush, or even Iraq, as long as he was substantially the product of a corrupt pre-9/11 election.  It was by re-electing him that we told the world we are in accordance with Bush's myopic, murderous world views.  

Only by forcing him out of office, through impeachment, can we outsmart bin Laden, whose plans are going swimmingly.  George Bush is playing checkers, while bin Laden is playing chess.  Only by impeachment can we put enough distance between Bush and the rest of us to cause Muslims who have not yet taken sides to ponder whether Bush and America are one and the same.  Once positions have hardened in the wrong direction, warns Scheuer, we are in for "a hundred years war drenched with blood on our own soil."