Gen. William Odom and withdraw from Iraq

The Lowell Sun is reporting that retired General William Odom has added his voice to calls for withdraw from Iraq. General Odom is a Vietnam vet, former director of the NSA and currently is a fellow at the Hudson Institute, a well known conservative Think Tank. This man is not some peacenik or liberal. To get a fuller picture of the man, see this post a Kos. Yet although his conservative, military credentials are unquestionable, he has come to believe a lot of what the anti Iraq-war crowd has been saying for some time now. For example

the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.

or

The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.

What struck me most, however, was the following

The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.

This is a proposal that I can agree with. This repositioning is a good idea not just because hunting bin Laden would be a more valuable use of our military than whatever it is they are doing in Iraq. It would also be a good move because the right-wing concerns about demoralization of the public and the military are not without merit. By 'repositioning' our forces, a great deal of the demoralizing affect of pulling out of Iraq could be reduced. While 'repositioning' our forces just to save face would be of no value, moving to Afghanistan does appear to have some merit.