Barack Obama showed up for an I-was-out-for-a-plane-ride-and-I-thought-I-would-stop-in visit with President Karzai in Afghanistan on March 28.

Obama has described the war in Afghanistan as a war of necessity. So after pledging another 30,000 troops to the troubled country in December 2009, he popped over to give US troops a pep talk – when notscolding Karzai about corruption in his government – in advance of a major offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar.

But does what happen in Afghanistan really make a difference to terrorism around the world?

Let’s see what has happened over the last several weeks:

December 25: Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb sewn into his underwear. Ostensibly, the explosive device was meant to go off as Northwest Airlines flight 253 was descending over Detroit. The plot was hatched by an Al-Qaeda group in Yemen.

February 17: Said Namouh, a Moroccan man living in Quebec, Canada, was sentenced to life in prison for planning terrorist attacks to be carried out in Europe. He made threats in an Internet video that warned Germany and Austria that they would be attacked if their governments did not withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. The 37-year-old was guilty of “conspiracy to detonate an explosive device, participating in a terrorist act, facilitating an act of terrorism and committing extortion for a terrorist group.”

March 9: American Colleen Renee LaRose, 46, aka Jihad Jane, was charged in Ireland for allegedly plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist who drew offensive depictions of the Prophet. In the days that followed, it was reported that Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, another American convert to Islam was also arrested in Ireland for her alleged involvement in the conspiracy to murder the Swedish man. At least seven arrests were made. Those arrested are from Algeria, Croatia, Palestine, Libya and the US.

March 28: FBI raids in Michigan led to nine people, all part of an anti-government Christian militia group calledHutaree, being indicted in a plot to kill police officers and start a war against the government. All were indicted by a federal grand jury for “seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence.”

March 29: Two suicide bombers, allegedly Chechen Muslims, attacked two different subway trains in Moscow, killing 39 morning commuters. More suicide blasts in southern Russia killed at least 12 more people two days later.

Let’s recap: A young Nigerian being handled by an extremist outfit in Yemen and flying from Amsterdam. American-bred women who have converted to Islam. Irish terror cells planning attacks in Sweden. Right-wing Americans wanting to overthrow the US government. Female suicide bombers in downtown Moscow.

The arrested members of the Hutaree militia. Photo: Reuters.

The fact that Chechnya has nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, the Madrid bombings or the Mumbai attacks on 26/11, and that the Hutaree are made up of white Americans, and that Irish-based terror plotters have grievances with Scandinavian journalists, and that there are white women screaming jihad, and that there was a hatemonger spreading propaganda on the Internet from a Quebec basement, and that Al-Qaeda training camps have ramped up in Yemen should make it clearer.

See? That’s why Afghanistan is so necessary.