The Democrats' hang-up on Iraq exacerbates their underestimation of the global terrorist threat. Their mantra is that if we hadn't attacked Iraq, we could better deal with the real terrorists in Afghanistan. John Kerry even suggested the other day that terrorists are in 65 nations because we attacked Iraq.

The implication is that if we hadn't attacked Iraq and had focused on capturing or killing Osama, the terrorist threat would be all but over. Even now, if we would just withdraw, the terrorist threat to the United States would be dramatically reduced.

But Democrats refuse to comprehend that Islamic extremists were already at war with us before we attacked Iraq and no amount of appeasement short of our wholesale conversion to radical Islam would have enabled us to escape their violent wrath. Iraq or no Iraq, we were already in the midst of a 50- to 100-yearlong war on terror. Foregoing Iraq would not have given us a get-out-of-war-free card. We never had that option.

Our attack on Iraq certainly hastened and accelerated the hostilities in that theater, because the jihadists weren't about to allow Iraq to taste freedom and self-rule at the behest of the Great Satan. But we did not start this war on terror, we didn't provoke the 9/11 attacks, and we didn't start hostilities against the terrorists in Iraq.

If we withdraw before Iraqi forces can defend their new government, catastrophic consequences will reverberate throughout the world -- way beyond Iraq. Iraq will become a terrorist-sponsoring hotbed for global jihad and a springboard for incalculable Middle East instability. The global jihadists will be emboldened with this major victory and the war will be prolonged indefinitely as a result.

Before "shock and awe," Democrats had impaired vision concerning the nature and scope of the global terrorist threat. But since then, Iraq has become their blinding obsession. If they were naively oblivious to the threat before, they are recklessly obtuse today.