Are We Still at War?

Let me share a couple of essays that really get to the heart of the current debate over interrogations and national security.

Are we really still at war? That's the question William Kristol throws out in his piece, " 'On a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009': Are we still at war?"

Speaking of Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, who sought to put the administration's release of the "torture" memos in the "perspective" of new bright, sunny and safe day, Kristol notes:

We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

Good news, if true. And it would be an amazing tribute to the preceding administration's efforts in the war on terror--efforts that Democrats have been saying for years were making us less safe. Apparently, the old policies worked. The threat from al Qaeda has gone. We now have the luxury of "reflection," as President Obama put it in his statement, the luxury of debating and deploring what we did back in the bad old days when there was a war on. After all, "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history."

Leave aside how dark and painful the chapter really was. The question is, Is it over? Is the chapter in which we had to focus on preventing further attacks really through? Isn't there still a war against the jihadists on?

Actually, for most of those on the left, and certainly those who visit my blog, it's the U.S. that should be the focus of international attention, not the terrorists. Former Bush administration officials should be in the dock at the Hague, or at least in some courtroom of the U.S. Star Chamber.

But check out as well Mark Theissen's, "The West Coast Plot: An 'Inconvenient Truth'."

I'll have more later ...