Posted by
Michael on Wednesday, September 06, 2006 10:11:42 PM
Jacob Weisberg
over at Slate asks whether or not the lack of terror
attacks within the United States is a result of improved
counterterrorism efforts by the Bush Administration, or if we are
simply lucky. Weisberg, who's definitely not a conservative, concedes
that the Bush Administration has done what needed to be done:
But any honest appraisal has to recognize that President Bush has
indeed played a role in keeping the United States free from another
attack. To say this is not to say that his policy choices have been
wise or that they have truly made America safer over the long term, but
simply that our avoidance of domestic terrorism over the past five
years is not entirely coincidental.
...You can argue, as Lawrence Wright does in this week's New Yorker,
that we are playing into al-Qaida's long-term plans. But it's pretty
hard to deny that by turning al-Qaida from an organization able to
commit terrorism into an organization capable only of inspiring
terrorism, the Bush administration has diminished the risk of attacks
against Americans over the past five years.
What a pleasant surprise. And here I was thinking that Christopher
Hitchens was the only guy at that magazine willing to say anything good
about the President.