Michael Cohen just figured out why we’re going to be in Iraq for a long time (hint: because of Al Qaeda):

In an otherwise fascinating and brilliant overview of Al Qaeda’s current status, [one of the nation's foremost experts on Al Qaeda] sounded one note that struck me as off-key, namely that we can’t leave Iraq because it will play directly into the terrorist organization’s narrative about American retreat - a narrative that was initially constructed in the aftermath of Vietnam and reinforced after American withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia.

At the time, I found the notion troubling, akin to the “credibility” notion that infused the thinking of so many Cold Warriors during the Vietnam War.

But it got me thinking and I went back to look at the President’s August 22nd speech to the VFW in August and I was struck by the fact that he made an almost identical argument.

Where exactly have you been, dude? The best documentary program on televsion, PBS’s Frontline, made this argument on October 4, 2001. Many deeply serious foreign policy thinkers—especially on the right, but also on the left—have been making this argument since 9/11: that Al Qaeda attacked us because it perceived us as weak and soft and lily-livered and unwilling to fight back.

I can’t remember how many articles I read in those first few months after 9/11 in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine, to mention just a few, that made this same point over and over again. Of course that was early on, when intelligent people were still looking for real answers.