What We Got Right in the War on Terror

I was hoping to do some big analysis of Abe Greenwald's masterful essay, at Commentary, but never got around to it. This is simply the best piece I've read on the war on terror:

Over the course of the 10 years, American authorities foiled more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots. Those averted tragedies were not foremost on the minds of revelers who gathered to celebrate Bin Laden’s demise on May 1 at Ground Zero, Times Square, and in front of the White House. But if a mere few of the plots had materialized, those spaces might not even have been open to public assembly.

Not only have U.S. authorities managed to keep America safe from al-Qaeda for a decade; by the time he was killed, Osama bin Laden was barely a leader. Among the items recovered at his compound in Abbottabad were some recent writings, in which the former icon lamented al-Qaeda’s dramatically sinking stock and pondered organizational rebranding as a possible antidote.

His growing insignificance as a global player was not the product of chance. The marginalization of the world’s principal jihadist was the result of audacious American policy—indeed, the most controversial and hotly debated policy undertaken in the wake of 9/11. In the words of Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in the Wall Street Journal, “the war in Iraq was Bin Laden’s great moral undoing.” In his desperate attempt to drive American fighting forces out of Mesopotamia, Bin Laden sanctioned a bloody civil war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The carnage failed to repel the United States, but in the end, the countrywide slaughter of Muslims proved too much to bear for al-Qaeda’s own one-time and would-be supporters. The “Sunni awakening” that helped transform Iraq was an awakening out of al-Qaeda jihadism, and the blow it delivered to Bin Laden’s ambitions was stunning.

After the turnaround in Iraq, the landscape of the Muslim world suffered even greater changes—with ordinary Muslims rising to revolt against Persian and Arab tyranny, not against American hegemony. As Fouad Ajami has written: “The Arab Spring has simply overwhelmed the world of the jihadists. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, younger people—hurled into politics by the economic and political failures all around them—are attempting to create a new political framework, to see if a way could be found out of the wreckage that the authoritarian states have bequeathed them.”

It was the Freedom Agenda of the George W. Bush administration—delineated and formulated as a conscious alternative to jihadism—that showed the way. Indeed, the costly American nation-building in Iraq has now led to the creation of the world’s first and only functioning democratic Arab state. One popular indictment of Bush maintains that he settled on the Freedom Agenda as justification for war after U.S. forces and inspectors found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The record shows otherwise. “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East,” he said before the invasion, in February 2003. “Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both.”

And something of the kind has come to pass. “One despot fell in 2003,” Ajami has said. “We decapitated him. Two despots, in Tunisia and Egypt, fell, and there is absolutely a direct connection between what happened in Iraq in 2003 and what’s happening today throughout the rest of the Arab world.”

Thus, there are three intertwined achievements that have proved to be the dispositive features of American success in the war on terror: formulating the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, reversing the course of the war in Iraq, and establishing a national-security apparatus to foil multiple terrorist attacks. It is no coincidence that they are also the most controversial foreign policies America has implemented since the Vietnam War.

September 11 was a hinge moment in American history. The attacks plunged the nation into a full-scale war against non-state entities. Any adequate American response had to break with previous approaches in previous conflicts. War could not be waged on parties inside states in the same way it had been waged on states themselves. Prisoners captured on a battlefield in a country not their own and with no interest in following the rules of conventional war could not be handled as they had been. Getting the edge on Islamist terror would mean fundamentally rethinking our approach to both the blunting of deadly threats and the shuttering of the political hothouses of the Middle East in which such threats thrive.

The adoption of these unprecedented and uncompromising means of war inspired animated debate in the United States. In fighting the war on terror, we have been told, America has become—depending on the accuser—either too dismissive or too enamored of democracy. Some on the left think our national-security apparatus undermines our defining ideals. On the right, outraged voices condemn our naive enthusiasm for helping to secure liberty for Muslims abroad, calling it a form of multicultural self-sabotage. After civil war seized post-invasion Iraq, critics from across the ideological spectrum denounced our misguided effort. The fits and starts and frustrations of the war decade have this one thing in common: we have done battle in an age when spectacular setbacks appear to provide irrefutable evidence of our own baseness and incompetence—a few years before drab good news arrives to refute both expert opinion and common knowledge.

The arguments that we have prosecuted the war on terror immorally and ineffectually are important, and deserve the respectful hearing they have received, even if many of those arguing these points have resorted to launching the most abject slanders and accusations toward those who believe the war on terror is just and has been fought honorably. To be sure, not everything the United States has done in the war on terror has been correct. Far from it. As Winston Churchill said, “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” In the fight against Islamist terrorism, American blunders have come in all shapes and sizes, and in truth there are few small wartime miscalculations. This is especially so in an age of instant global headlines.

We continue to suffer for our biggest mistakes. Concerning the failure to catch Bin Laden and make serious efforts to nation-build early in the Afghanistan war, inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons, and the Pentagon’s ill-preparedness for the Iraqi insurgency, there can be no absolution. These errors have cost the country tragic sums in money, credibility, and life. They also set our efforts back precious years.

But these blunders, great as they are, have not undone America’s outstanding accomplishments. Ten years ago, the most delusional optimist among us would not have predicted the irrelevancy of Osama bin Laden or a decade without another al-Qaeda attack, let alone a democratic Iraq and a transformative explosion of antiauthoritarianism in the Middle East.

Nor do American achievements in this war mean we are in a position to quit the fight. The notion that America achieved closure with Bin Laden’s killing suggests to some, perhaps even the occupant of the White House, that the war on terror has had its decade and the United States can now move on. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” said Barack Obama this summer as he announced a sizable drawdown of troops in Afghanistan for the fall of 2012. The suggestion that our work is done has traction only because resolute American action at home and abroad have provided a sense of security so pervasive it now goes unquestioned.

The United States has fallen prey to false comfort in the past. So before we submit to the siren song of closure, we would do well to recall that that is exactly where this war began—and our retaining some genuine measure of security has been the result of thinking and acting more boldly than we have in generations.

Now go read the whole thing.

The Palestinian Obsession

From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post:

If nothing else, the Palestinians’ UN statehood gambit goes a long way towards revealing the deep-seated European and US pathologies that enable and prolong the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian Authority – or Fatah – or PLO initiative of asking the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to upgrade its status to that of a sovereign UN member state or a sovereign non-UN member state is an act of diplomatic aggression.

Eighteen years ago this week, on September 13, 1993, the PLO signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel on the White House lawn.

There, the terror group committed itself to a peace process in which all disputes between Israel and the PLO – including the issue of Palestinian statehood – would be settled in the framework of bilateral negotiations.

The PA was established on the basis of this accord. The territory, money, arms and international legitimacy it has been given was due entirely to the PLO pledge to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel through bilateral negotiations.

By abandoning negotiations with Israel two years ago, and opting instead to achieve its nationalist aims outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, the Palestinians are destroying the diplomatic edifice on which the entire concept of a peace process is based. They are announcing that they have no intention of living at peace with Israel. Rather they intend to move ahead at Israel’s expense...

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Rips Michael Moore on Osama Bin Laden's 'Execution'

Michael Moore's repeating the same talking points I heard him spewing almost a year ago. Only 100 al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan? Sheesh. Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer faced more than half that when he saved 36 lives in 2009. And this week's attack on the NATO compound was an astonishingly effective siege of the central command of the international protection force. Unreal. And here's Moore again saying we shouldn't have killed Bin Laden. He was just another crazy guy in the world, or something. Watch. Elisabeth Hasselbeck let's him have it:

Marine Who Saved 36 in Afghanistan Gets Medal of Honor

I was at lunch today and watched President Obama award the medal to Cpl. Dakota Meyer.

At Los Angeles Times, "Marine is awarded rare Medal of Honor at White House":

The desperate call crackled over the radio in predawn darkness: A small team of American and Afghan troops was pinned down in a remote village under withering fire from three sides. A young lieutenant was begging for artillery or air support. Without it, he yelled, "we are going to die out here."

Can't be done, came the reply. It might kill civilians.

Less than a mile away, Marine Cpl. Dakota L. Meyer heard the radio exchange in agony. His buddies were dying, yet Meyer was under orders to stay where he was. Four times he requested permission to go to their aid, and four times he was refused.

After two hours, Meyer decided to defy his superiors. The powerfully built 21-year-old with a soft Kentucky drawl climbed into the turret of a gun truck mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun and, with another Marine driving, raced toward the battle.

On Thursday, Meyer was at the White House to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor, for saving the lives of 36 combatants — 13 Americans and 23 Afghans — and personally killing at least eight Taliban fighters that day, Sept. 8, 2009. He is the first living Marine to receive the award since the Vietnam War.

Meyer, now 23, stood at attention in dress uniform as President Obama recounted what happened in the village of Ganjigal in Afghanistan's Kunar province.

Added: Bing West's essay, "The Afghan Rescue Mission Behind Today's Medal of Honor."

Israel and Marriage Key Issues in New York Special Election

Two of my most important public policy issues.

From John McCormack, at Weekly Standard:

How did Republican Bob Turner pull off an 8-point win (54%-46%) in a district that gave Turner just 39% of the vote in 2010 and went 55% for Obama in 2008? Sure, it helped that the Democratic incumbent Anthony Weiner resigned in disgrace after he accidentally posted a lewd photo of himself, intended for a young woman, to his public Twitter account. But scandal alone wasn't enough to flip New York's 9th congressional district to Republicans. In early August a Siena poll showed Democrat David Weprin leading Turner 48% to 42%, but by late last week Siena showed Turner had pulled into the lead 50% to 44%.

o win in a Democratic district, Turner needed Democratic votes. The two issues that seem to have helped drive some of the district's traditionally Democratic voters to cast their ballots for Turner were Obama's Israel policy and Weprin's vote for same-sex marriage. Former Democratic New York City mayor Ed Koch endorsed Turner primarily to send a message to Obama on Israel. Democratic state senator Ruben Diaz backed Turner because of Weprin's vote on marriage. Democratic state assemblyman Dov Hikind says both issues, as well as dissatisfaction with Obama's failed economic policies, were "overriding" factors that led him to support Turner.

"This is an underlying issue that is extremely powerful issue," Hikind says of Weprin's vote for same-sex marriage. Weprin didn't merely vote for the bill. He got on the floor of the assembly and compared voting against same-sex marriage to "outlawing marriages between Jews and non-Jews or interracial marriages.”

"The fundamental message was 'I'm an orthodox Jew and gay marriage is perfectly fine,'" Hikind says of his Democratic colleague's speech. "To me, when he did that, he crossed every single line." Forty orthodox rabbis declared that orthodox Jews could not support Weprin.

Keep reading.

And yeah, he crossed every single line, ASFL.

VIDEO: Afghanistan Firefight — NATO Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, Kabul

Via This Ain't Hell...:

And at New York Times, "Militants Attack U.S. Embassy in Kabul."

KABUL, Afghanistan — Heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests struck Tuesday at two of the most prominent symbols of the American diplomatic and military presence in Kabul, the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters, demonstrating the Taliban’s ability to infiltrate even the most heavily fortified districts of the capital.

As the insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, Westerners sought shelter — one rocket penetrated the embassy compound — and Afghan government workers fled their offices, emptying the city center. NATO and Afghan troops responded with barrages of bullets. At least 6 people were killed and 19 wounded.

Keep reading.

Myth and Reality After 9/11

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review:

Why did radical Islamic terrorists kill almost 3,000 Americans a decade ago?

Few still believe the old myth that U.S. foreign policy or support for Israel logically earned us Osama bin Laden’s wrath. After all, the U.S. throughout the 1990s had saved Islamic peoples from Bosnia and Kosovo to Somalia and Kuwait. Russia and China, in contrast, had oppressed or killed tens of thousands of their own Muslims without much fear of provoking al-Qaeda.

Moreover, thousands of Arabs have been killed recently, but by their own Libyan and Syrian governments, not Israeli Defense Forces. Al-Qaeda still issues death threats to Americans even though its original pretexts for going to war — such as U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia — have long been irrelevant.

On this ten-year anniversary of 9/11, no one has yet refuted the general truth that bin Laden tried to hijack popular Arab discontent over endemic poverty and self-induced misery. In cynical Hitlerian fashion, al-Qaeda’s propagandists sought to blame the mess of the Arab Middle East on Jews and foreigners, rather than seeking to address homegrown corrupt kleptocracies, inefficient statism, indigenous tribalism, gender apartheid, and religious fundamentalism and intolerance ...

More at that link.

George W. Bush, National Geographic Interview: Remembering 9/11

I've been thinking about President Bush. I love him. Not a perfect president, especially on limiting the size of government, but he was the right president to lead the country in the war on terror. And for that he has my enduring gratitude.

This is a surprisingly comprehensive and fascinating interview. Watching the footage and photos from that day, I am reminded just how blessed our country was to have him during this time of tragedy and grief. It's difficult for some to admit, but his leadership and calm helped move us through one of the most difficult times in our country's history.

Remembering 9/11: Air Traffic Controller Final Call to Flight 77

I mentioned that I had a "Pentagon Attack Truther" in class last week. Perhaps my students might learn something at this video, from ABC News:

Beyond Cairo Embassy Attack, Israel Senses Wider Siege

See New York Times, "Beyond Cairo, Israel Sensing a Wider Siege":

JERUSALEM — With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israel found itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor.

The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters.

It was an image that reminded some Israelis of Iran in 1979, when Israel evacuated its embassy in Tehran after the revolution there replaced an ally with an implacable foe.

“Seven months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egyptian protesters tore to shreds the Israeli flag, a symbol of peace between Egypt and its eastern neighbor, after 31 years,” Aluf Benn, the editor in chief of the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote Saturday. “It seems that the flag will not return to the flagstaff anytime soon.”

More at that link, and see also, Barry Rubin, "Ten Years After September 11: Who’s Really Winning the War On Terrorism." Rubin looks at the range of extremist terrorist groupings outside of al Qaeda --- Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt --- and suggests that terrorism is on the march. Israel is right smack-dab in the middle of it all. As a challenge for U.S. foreign policy, the war on terrorism is hardly won.

Pentagon Memorial September 10, 2011

At Marooned in Marin, "Visiting The Pentagon Memorial - September 10, 2011."

Very nice. Click over there to RTWT.

America's Broken Unity After 9/11

ICYMI, be sure to read Daniel Henninger's, "Whatever Happened to 9/11?", from a couple of days ago. Henninger recalls where he was on the morning of the attacks, and what it was like for him. Then he begins discussing the American response to the terror, for example, with the USA Patriot Act. There's more like that, and then he writes:

Virtually every aspect of the Bush antiterror policies became a target for litigation from the ACLU, opposition in Congress and press exposures: the wiretaps, Guantanamo, the Swift program to track terrorist finances, military courts, the Bush Doctrine of pre-preemptive strikes, terrorist interrogations. Opposition to the Iraq war rose, too, but the effort to thwart the provisions of the Patriot Act was a separate front.

Policy disagreements are inevitable. But how does one account for the intense personal animosity directed toward George Bush and those who worked for him in the government? They were hated, reviled, mocked. Recall, for instance, the effort to disbar former Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee for writing the legal opinions on aggressive interrogations. Opposition wasn't enough. The destruction of reputation became a policy goal.

This Sunday's 10th anniversary commemorations will evoke some semblance of the unity then in the face of an enemy attack on U.S. soil. But make no mistake: It's gone.

What happened?

Well, continue reading. But as noted above, political opposition wasn't enough for the left. The utter destruction of opponents is required, for according to progressive/socialist ideology, conservatives and Republicans are greater enemies to America than the terrorists. And the left's bloodlust demands for revenge and recrimination continue right into the 10th anniversary. I watched Rachel Maddow on MSNBC while working on this post. Her broadcast, "Day of Destruction, Decade of War," was one long repudiation of America's response to the terrorist attacks, from the decade-long war footing and military mobilization, to the interrogation techniques that helped generate actionable intelligence to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden. Plus, I'm reading David Cole, at New York Review, "After September 11: What We Still Don’t Know." Cole is a far-left activist professor of law at Georgetown University. He's repeatedly argued that the bigger threat to American security is the U.S. government and not the terrorists determined to decapitate it. At Cole's New York Review piece, he revives calls for war crimes prosecutions against Bush administration officials, taking President Obama to task for purportedly not standing up for constitutional values:

As President Obama entered office, he sought to make a clean break with his predecessor. But at the same time, he has insisted that we look forward, not back. His administration has refused to conduct the criminal investigation that the Convention Against Torture requires wherever there are credible allegations that a person within our jurisdiction has committed torture. His Justice Department vetoed the recommendation of its own Office of Professional Responsibility that lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee be referred to their bar associations for disciplinary action in view of their having failed to provide candid legal advice in drafting the “torture memos.” The administration has sought to derail efforts in Spain to investigate US responsibility for torture of Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo. And President Obama continues to oppose even a high-level commission to investigate and report on the nation’s departure from the rule of law and descent into torture, abduction, and disappearances.

Obama appears to believe that such an investigation would be divisive, and might undermine his efforts to portray himself as above partisan wrangling. But division is a fact of life in Washington these days. And being above the fray is not an unmitigated good; some things are worth fighting for. A legal and moral accounting of the wrongs we have done should be high on the list.

Cole goes on like that, and it's interesting that he picks out John Yoo for special condemnation, twice in fact, basically renewing the call that Yoo should have been disbarred for his work in the Bush administration, and by extension, tried as a war criminal.

Behold the mind of the progressive left on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attacks. For radical progressives, it's America that's the problem, not the fanatical killers who continue to wage war against us.

Terrorist Threat Prompts Tighter Security on 9/11

See New York Post, "Cops flood NYC streets and transit hubs amid bomb threat."

And at Fox News, "New York, DC Beef Up Security in Face of ‘Credible’ Terror Threat":

The two cities that were at the heart of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are on high alert this weekend after the government received a “credible” tip that Al Qaeda plans to launch an attack on Washington or New York as the nation marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Extra security is clearly visible on subways in both cities as officials are taking seriously a joint FBI, Homeland Security Intelligence Bulletin, first obtained by Fox News that states the timing and method of the potential terror plot.

“Al Qaeda possibly planned to carry out attacks…including a possible car bomb attack,” the bulletin reads.

Al Qaeda may have sent American terrorists or men carrying U.S. travel documents to launch the attack, government officials say.

And at ABC News, "Alleged 9/11 Anniversary Plot: Possible Suspect May Be ID'd" (via Memeorandum).

Michelle Malkin: 'All the wrong 9/11 lessons'

From Michelle's syndicated column:

...too many teachers refuse to show and tell who the perpetrators of 9/11 were and who their heirs are today. My own daughter was one year old when the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon went up in flames and Shanksville, Pa., became hallowed ground for the brave passengers of United Flight 93. In second grade, her teachers read touchy-feely stories about peace and diversity to honor the 9/11 dead. They whitewashed Osama bin Laden, militant Islam and centuries-old jihad out of the curriculum. Apparently, the youngsters weren’t ready to learn even the most basic information about the evil masterminds of Islamic terrorism.

Mary Beth Hicks, author of the new book “Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid,” points to a recent review of 10 widely used textbooks in which the concepts of jihad and sharia were either watered down or absent. These childhood experts have determined that grade school is too early to delve into the specifics of the homicidal clash of Allah’s sharia-avenging soldiers with the freedom-loving Western world.

Yet, many of the same protectors of fragile elementary-school pupils can’t wait to teach them all the ins and outs of condoms, cross-dressers and crack addictions.

We pulled our daughter out of a cesspool of academic and moral relativism and found a reality-grounded, rigorous charter school where no-nonsense teachers refuse to sugarcoat inconvenient facts and history. Many of the students are children of soldiers and servicemen and women who — inspired by the heroes of 9/11 — have voluntarily deployed time and time again to kill the American Dream destroyers abroad before they kill us over here.

There’s no better way to hammer home the message that “freedom is not free” than to have your kids go to school with other kids whose dads and moms are gone for years at a time — missing births and birthday parties, recitals and soccer practice, Christmas pageants and Independence Day fireworks.

But instead of unfettered pride in our armed forces, social justice educators in high schools and colleges across the country indoctrinate American students into viewing our volunteer armed forces as victims, monsters and pawns in a leftist “social struggle.”

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Blame America-ism still permeates classrooms and the culture. A special 9/11 curriculum distributed in New Jersey schools advises teachers to “avoid graphic details or dramatizing the destruction” wrought by the 9/11 hijackers, and instead focus elementary school students’ attention on broadly defined “intolerance” and “hurtful words.”

No surprise: Jihadist utterances such as “Kill the Jews,” “Allahu Akbar” and “Behead all those who insult Islam” are not among the “hurtful words” studied.

Middle-schoolers are directed to “analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history.” And high-school students are taught “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” – pop-psychology claptrap used to excuse jihadists’ behavior based on their purported low self-esteem and oppressed status caused by “European colonialism.”

It is no wonder that a new poll released this week showed that Americans today “are generally more willing to believe that U.S. policies in the Middle East might have motivated the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon,” according to Reuters.

To make matters worse, we have an appeaser-in-chief who wrote shortly after the jihadist attacks a decade ago that the “essence of this tragedy” derives “from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others.” A “climate of poverty and ignorance” caused the attacks, then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama preached. Never mind the Ivy League and Oxford educations, the oil wealth and the middle-class status of legions of al-Qaida plotters and operatives.

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us no matter how much we try to appease them.

The post-9/11 problem isn’t whether we’ll forget. The problem is: Will we ever learn?

That's not how I teach. I don't sugarcoat it, although I'm respectful of those who've been brainwashed by Noam Chomsky and 9/11 truthers and what not. Mostly, though, many students don't quite know exactly what happened on 9/11. A student stopped me last week during discussions, when I started taking about Flight 77 (the Pentagon) and Flight 93 (Shanksville). She didn't know there were four planes hijacked that morning. Ten years on, it's not only "never forget," it's educate the next generation on what happened, and don't pull punches.

VIDEO: 'Remembering 9/11 – Never Quit'

From the Hertiage Foundation:

Ten Years Without an Attack

From John Yoo, at Wall Street Journal (alternative link). Discussing President George W. Bush's leadership, Yoo writes:

Looking back over the decade, the first clear lesson is the critical importance of Mr. Bush’s decision to consider the struggle with al Qaeda a war. Unlike past administrations, his chose not to view al Qaeda as a Middle Eastern version of the mafia, if on a grander scale. The 9/11 attacks constituted an act of war—they were a decapitation strike, an effort to eliminate our nation’s leadership in a single blow. If the Soviet Union had carried out the same attacks, no one would have doubted that the United States was at war.

Al Qaeda’s independence from any nation state would not shield it from the American military and leave it solely to the more tender mercies of the FBI and the courts.

Choosing war opened the arsenal that has decimated al Qaeda’s leadership and blunted its plan of attack. A nation at war need not wait for a suicide bombing to arrest the “suspects” who remain. Instead, it can fire missiles or send in covert teams to pre-emptively capture or kill the enemy. Our government doesn’t need a judge’s permission before tapping an al Qaeda operative’s phones, intercepting his emails, or arresting him.

We need not provide terrorists with Miranda warnings, lawyers and jury trials. A nation at war can detain the enemy without lawyers or civilian trials and interrogate them for information to prevent future attacks.

In its second critical decision, the Bush administration pushed to translate knowledge into action. Winning the war requires, above all, the gathering, analysis and exploitation of intelligence. Before 9/11 our national security bureaucracies, prodded by the civil liberties worries of the courts and Congress, had deliberately handicapped their ability to pull all intelligence into a single mosaic. Passage of the Patriot Act, the expanded interception of international terrorist emails and phone calls, and the tough interrogation of a few high-ranking al Qaeda leaders broadened and deepened the pool of information on our enemy.

At the same time, the intelligence community and the U.S. Armed Forces have honed the integration of tactical intelligence and operations to a deadly knife’s-edge. Bin Laden’s killing this summer was not a one-off lucky shot, but the culmination of a decade of work combining intelligence-gathering, analysis and rapid strike teams. American presidents did not have such reliable options in the past—witness Jimmy Carter’s disastrous attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages or Bill Clinton’s failure to kill or capture bin Laden.

RELATED: "John Yoo at David Horowitz's West Coast Retreat, April 3, 2011."

Deterring Enemies in a Shaken World

Daniel Byman reviews Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, at New York Times:

As they relate this new direction [in counter-terrorism after 9/11], Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Shanker put flesh on approaches and operations that in the past were largely in the realm of specialists. The book is sprinkled with small, vivid anecdotes that bring day-to-day counterterrorism work to life. Take the Horse Blanket, a “graduating series of contingencies that each federal agency could take in response to a potential or actual terrorist attack” beginning in 2007.

Much like a playbook, the Horse Blanket (whose intriguing name goes unexplained here) detailed the cost of each option, its level of disruption and its impact on foreign policy. A report of terrorist efforts to cross from Canada might lead to an increase in border security. Should intelligence agencies gather credible reports of the ultimate nightmare, a nuclear weapon being moved to attack an American city, the border would be shut. Policy makers can now ratchet counterterrorism up or down to match the perceived threat.

Technology has made a revolutionary difference. The authors explain how the contents of cellphones belonging to captured terrorists are cloned in seconds, with computers scanning the numbers to match those of other known terrorists. Such information can tie a suspect to an enemy network and its locations, which in turn helps interrogators ask smarter questions and enables them to direct military forces better. More bad guys die or are taken off the streets, and fewer innocents suffer.

Other efforts are aimed at the hearts and minds of those who have not yet taken sides. To discredit Al Qaeda with the Muslim public, officials sought “to create a constant drumbeat of anti-Al Qaeda information that was factual, directly quoted and heavily sourced,” as one White House official described it. So when the Taliban kill a schoolteacher or terrorists blind schoolgirls in an acid attack, the horrors are trumpeted in local and international media, countering Al Qaeda’s narrative that its fearless warriors fight only heavily armed United States soldiers.

Today, the authors write, American counterterrorism policy embraces “the new deterrence.” By imposing costs on terrorists’ reputations, chances for success, material assets — whatever they hold dear — you “alter the behavior and thinking of your adversary.” In contrast to deterrence strategies during the cold war, deterrence today does not involve a state actor, like the Soviet Union, with nuclear-tipped missiles but rather more nebulous networks that include not only fanatic suicide bombers but also more rational financiers, recruiters, arms runners and others who can be dissuaded by the threat of death or arrest. The new deterrence involves “kinetic” instruments, to use the military parlance for killing people, but also innovative information operations that might discredit a cause and scare away providers of funds.

Sounds like a great book.

Pamela Geller on 9/11: A Day of Mourning, Grieving and Remembering

I so much wish I could be in New York for 9/11, but it's not happening this year. Ten years is a long time, but decades from now I'm confident that Pamela Geller will be remembered as one of the brightest lights commemorating the fallen. She'll also be remembered for sounding the tocsin of "Never Again." And for that, she takes a lot of grief for all of us who live in dignity and work to preserve our cherished freedoms against the forces of modern totalitarianism.



Here she's interviewed by Ezra Levant, via Blazing Cat Fur:

And see Pamela's post, "PAMELA GELLER ON SUN TV WITH EZRA LEVANT: 911 FREEDOM RALLY."

September 11 Attacks Spurred Expansion of Homeland Security Programs at America's Colleges and Universities

Continuing coverage of the series at Los Angeles Times, "9/11, Ten Years After."



Here's a report from Wednesday, "9/11 spawned big changes on campus."



Check the whole thing. It's fascinating. But, while it's great that more and more students have cultivated a deeper sense of civic duty following September 11, the idea that increasing numbers of students are turning to the public sector for government jobs is a little dismaying. In a time of deep economic stagnation, the nation should be churning out enterprisers and inventers. Instead, we churn out bureaucrats and regulators. There's certainly a place for each in a $15 trillion economy, but the pace of government growth relative to the private sector has not declined. Strange. But then again, this is exactly the stuff that Mark Steyn's been warning about, so ain't that the darnedest?

9/11, Ten Years After: The Costs of Security — More Domestic Surveillance

Continuing my blogging on the Los Angeles Times' September 11 series, see: "A key Sept. 11 legacy: more domestic surveillance."



PREVIOUSLY: "9/11, Ten Years After: The Costs of Security — Has All the Spending Paid Off?"