May 26, 2008
There's a little Jimmy Carter in all of us....
John at PowerLine:
On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.
Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history.....
He has a very interesting timeline of terror attacks inside America or against American interests abroad. And a very interesting list of possible reasons why attacks on us have dwindled to nothing.
And yet I think he misses the real explanation.
Terrorist attacks are done for a reason. The terrorists hope to get something out of them. The normal reaction in the West is to give them what they want. They want to sow fear, so we become fearful. They want publicity, so our "journalists" hasten to oblige. They want to demonstrate that we are not really dangerous, and so we lash out ineffectually. They want concessions, we run to the negotiating table. They want a break, we give them a truce.
It's like our collective mind has a little Jimmy Carter whispering in its ear.
2002 and 2003 was the first time we responded to terror attacks by doing something they REALLY don't want us to do. We cold-bloodedly and effectively brought democracy and freedom to two Islamic countries, and most importantly, one of them right in the Arab heartland. If our project in Iraq succeeds, al-Qaeda and its project are locked out of that country forever. They know it, they've said it, they've thrown their best efforts into the counter-attack.
And they fear that if they attack us we may do something like Iraq again
That's why they have not hit us.
Update: And also, what has been our reaction to al-Qaeda's bloody counterattack in Iraq? It should have been: "YES! We've stung them! Let's do more of this! Faster, please."
Instead, for many of us, including almost all Democrats and leftists, and much of our government, it's been, "Give them what they want!" And who has done the most to resist the pressure to cave in Iraq? To resist the pressure to give the terrorists what they want? President George W. Bush. We are gonna miss this guy, I predict. We're gonna miss him once he's gone. [My thoughts on WHY the left is so desperate to lose in Iraq are here.]
(This is just an old photo from 2003, from my Iraq archives.)
Iraqi schoolgirls show off their new chalkboards donated by friends and family of U.S. Navy Seabees assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four. Navy Seabee units have been participating in extensive reconstruction of schools, hospitals and bridges throughout Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Brandon Harding [From DefendAmerica's Sept.'03 Photo Archive]
Better still, nobody sees to realize that Afghanistan and Iraq BRACKET Iran, the source of most of trouble. It was cheaper to settle an old score with Iraq than take on Iran (twice the population) directly. Judging from the results, the Iran leaders understood the message. Only fools care whether or not Hussein still had WMDs at the time of the invasion.
Posted by: redmanrt at May 26, 2008 02:42 PMAttacks up in 05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601623.html
up in 2006 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq's sectarian warfare fueled a sharp increase in global terrorism in 2006, the U.S. State Department reported Monday.
The total number of terrorist attacks was up more than 25 percent from the previous year, according to the State Department's annual report on global terrorism.
Incidents in Iraq accounted for nearly half of the 14,000 attacks and about two-thirds of the more than 20,000 fatalities worldwide. The number of deaths blamed on attacks increased by about 40 percent.
Up in 2007
WASHINGTON - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.The annual report’s release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year’s edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said....
Get your facts straight...
Posted by: Dan at May 26, 2008 08:07 PMPlease save as the most common sence yet!!
Posted by: Lea at May 26, 2008 08:08 PMDan,
PowerLine was specifically not writing about the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. The discussion is about attacks on the US, and our interests overseas, which means things like embassies or businesses.
And the type of articles you are quoting tend to be dishonest. They lump together figures for all attacks, so as to conceal the very dramatic drop in attacks outside of combat areas.
Why do they do this? Why do you do this?
Why is it that America could not find local proxies
in its effort to unseat Saddam and had to commit its own soldiers?. Old imperial powers always had collections of proxies.
Plus the current Iraqi powers that US is supporting are cut from the similar mold and are terrorist or terrorist-supporting themselves
Bisaal,
Proxies are only useful in situations where one doesn't want to accomplish much. You support a proxy ruler so you can focus your energies somewhere else, or maintain an empire on the cheap.
But, as I've often pointed out, we have a long list of goals in Iraq. Proxies won't accomplish many of them.
And an elected government will NOT tend to support terrorism. It doesn't need to. It will usually do what the voters want, and if they want violent action, that will be done openly.
I think the tacit support of Shi'ite militias last year by the Iraqi government happened because it was not free to openly smash the Sunni insurgents with brutal force. We would not allow it. My guess is that, if we had not been interfering, the Iraqi Defense Forces would have flattened a few Sunni towns, and achieved the same "awakening" effect among the Sunni--join peacefully with the political process, or be killed.
Posted by: John Weidner at May 27, 2008 08:07 AM
