Are We Safer? … Hussein Says “No”
Are We Safer?
by John Hinderaker - Powerline Blog:
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:
1988
February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.
December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.
1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.
1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.
February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.
1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden’s plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.
November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.
1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.
June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.
1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.
November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.
1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.
August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.
1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he steered the airplane into the ocean.
2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.
2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
December: Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.
The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden’s cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:
2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam’s government.
2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.
October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.
2004
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2005
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2006
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2007
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
I have omitted from the above accounting a few “lone wolf” Islamic terrorist incidents, like the Washington, D.C. snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd. These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the “lone wolves” were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore could not have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al Qaeda leaders.
It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field. Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.
There are a number of possible reasons why our government’s actions after September 11 may have made us safer. Overthrowing the Taliban and depriving al Qaeda of its training grounds in Afghanistan certainly impaired the effectiveness of that organization. Waterboarding three top al Qaeda leaders for a minute or so apiece may have given us the vital information we needed to head off plots in progress and to kill or apprehend three-quarters of al Qaeda’s leadership. The National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on international terrorist communications may have allowed us to identify and penetrate cells here in the U.S., as well as to identify and kill terrorists overseas. We may have penetrated al Qaeda’s communications network, perhaps through the mysterious Naeem Noor Khan, whose laptop may have been the 21st century equivalent of the Enigma machine. Al Qaeda’s announcement that Iraq is the central front in its war against the West, and its call for jihadis to find their way to Iraq to fight American troops, may have distracted the terrorists from attacks on the United States. The fact that al Qaeda loyalists gathered in Iraq, where they have been decimated by American and Iraqi troops, may have crippled their ability to launch attacks elsewhere. The conduct of al Qaeda in Iraq, which revealed that it is an organization of sociopaths, not freedom fighters, may have destroyed its credibility in the Islamic world. The Bush administration’s skillful diplomacy may have convinced other nations to take stronger actions against their own domestic terrorists. (This certainly happened in Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason.) Our intelligence agencies may have gotten their act together after decades of failure. The Department of Homeland Security, despite its moments of obvious lameness, may not be as useless as many of us had thought.
No doubt there are officials inside the Bush administration who could better allocate credit among these, and probably other, explanations of our success in preventing terrorist attacks. But based on the clear historical record, it is obvious that the Bush administration has done something since 2001 that has dramatically improved our security against such attacks. To fail to recognize this, and to rail against the Bush administration’s security policies as failures or worse, is to sow the seeds of greatly increased susceptibility to terrorist attack in the next administration.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
From 2003 back a hussein democrat believes that we deserved those attacks. Surprisingly enough since President Bush has taken all our freedoms they can believe that.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:08 pm“….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.”
wtf is with “alleged”? Fucking lawyers…
Fighting terror created terror….. what a dumbfuck.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:47 pmbizarre, Lockerbee plane blown-up isn’t in the list :
That was supposed a terrorist attack from a nowadays reborn good friend : Kadhafi, but in reality he only lends the arms and technicians, it was an iranian design from the beginings
France also counts about the same numbers of terrorist attacks as the US, but never went so numerous at a time on our soil (Tenere plane blown-up was though, Lebanon barracks…) A good fonctionment of the DST (renseignments services) and of the laws is the key, that allows to intern a presomptued terrorist before he makes his plans come true.
But as far as the US are concerned with the terrorism threats, it started in the enchanted times of Brzezinski (and of Peanuts), when the US planned to remove the Shah from Iran, financed the Talebani in Afghanistan (to fuck the Russians), armed the Muslims Bosnians and Kosovars, to fuck Serbia (and Russia), “the great Middle-East” : a green belt of fanatic religious facing the evil empire of URSS ; that was the idea of these enlightened brains.
But, the reality is not so simple to handle as it would be in a penthagonal plan, if you don’t want to be fucked, then don’t play the sorcerer-apprentice…
we were also targeted, but as post-colonial interferer (it could not have been else, the new little dictators didn’t know nothing of the international relations and businesses knowledge
our adventage, is to know their psychology, their tactics, their ramifications…
May 26th, 2008 at 1:52 amhi John, how y’a doing ?
May 26th, 2008 at 3:38 amThe reason why we haven’t been attacked cause all those who would attack us are rotting in Afghanistan or Iraq with US lead in their corpse.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:51 amAnd this fool wants to be POTUS? GW is no Churchill. But he is no Chamberlain either. Obambam is just another Jimmy Carter wrapped up in the enigma of Chamberlain.
Of course Dhimis are ignoring the obvious and spreading lies and disinformation about our successes in the GWOT.
That’s what socialist anarchists like BHO do. Dhimis lie and people die. That’s their legacy of the VN era.
They’re trying hard to repeat history. Only this time they put the entire country…and the west at risk for doing so.
Go back to IL. Magic Negro. Maybe that BS you preach works in your “Liberation Theology” church. It doesn’t work here in the real world.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:05 amObama and the Democrats have been WRONG about everything.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:02 amWhy they have credibility is beyond reason venturing into the insane.
Please note that as soon as Saddam fell, all international attacks on Americans ceased! al Qaeda focused on Iraq and we stacked up their corpses in large piles. When we let warriors run things, instead of the State Department weasels, we simply crushed them. Now, with the Iraq military standing up, it should be clear to even the MSM that we have given al Qaeda its first defeat… ever.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:05 amObama sucks dick
May 26th, 2008 at 5:56 amObama obviously believes he can save the world with a feather duster and a smile. It boggles my mind that a senator with only 2yrs experience if that, no foreign policy or defense credentials can talk out his pie hole on such critical security policies. Of course behind that ignorant smile of his are more sinister objectives too.
His socialist racially divisive campaign speaks equally as any cocaine laced peace pipe he’s content to share with America’s enemies. A peace pipe that I might add will be shoved up his elitist sorry ass so fast by some Islamist despot he’ll be ruing the day he ever crawled out of his diapers. I suppose he could always borrow Ol Jimmah’s incontinence briefs, one size fits all libtards apparently..
May 26th, 2008 at 6:32 amPeople like Obama and his little pod people followers seem to think just because we havent been attacked means the threat is not real. now i have heard many say that. that the warnings about radical islam are overblown, but they never put into account that what the President has done has made us all safer and for the fact that our brave troops are taking it to hajji every day of the week.
but if they were to admit that the threat is real, that means they would also have to admit what a great job Bush and our troops are doing. They would rather look like irrational morons than admit that though
May 26th, 2008 at 6:34 amIf this friggin’ moron gets into the oval office, we are going to see how much GW has done to protect us real quick - the relative peace we live in over here now due to the good work of GW anti-terror policies will vaporize like the Twin towers.
Once the Obamination’s policies get going, like pulling us out of direct contact in Iraq, and repealing laws that have kept Fortress America safe and sound, it will become very clear 
though by then it will be TOO DAMN LATE. It is far past time that this fool tell us EXACTLY what HE intends to do to make things better - so far it has just been bullshit and ignorance that was tried before and FAILED MISERABLY 
May 26th, 2008 at 7:18 amfuck off obama
May 26th, 2008 at 8:01 amNot until all the towel-headed bed-sheeted mo fo yahoos are either dead, in jail or have quit and gone back to their turd-world dirt-floor cities, will we be be safe.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:16 amThese people are nuts, irrational, ignorant and basically fu*ked up.
The old saying.. Kill ‘em all, let God sort it out.
Don’t forget Bill Clinton caught Ahmed Ressam who planned to bomb LAX Terminals on the eve of the millennium. (Ok it was actually an alert customs agent who found it odd that a passenger aboard a Canadian/Washington car ferry in Port Angeles would be nervous and sweating on a could December day. To our luck it turned out the reason the guy was sweating was due to his malaria acting up.)
Drill, the D.C. snipers were in and around the Bellingham area just prior to the Sept. and Oct. 2002 shootings. I have no proof connecting it, but in June 2004 a librarian in Deming Wa. was contacted by the FBI requesting the checkout history for a book biographing Osama Bin Laden. Someone reported to the FBI that in the margin was pencilled “If the things I’m doing is a crime, then let history be a witness I am criminal. Hostility towards America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by God.” The librarian fought the request and the order was rescinded ten days later.
It would have been too late to catch the snipers anyway and maybe the agent who was just being diligent, was trying to rule out that possibility. The writing copies almost exactly a direct quote from a 1998 OBL interview. Hopefully, since Deming is a small town, (not likely the book saw much handling) the FBI was able to compare J. A. Muhammad’s prints to any that were on the book.
The librarian was heralded for her effort by lefty groups operating under the guise of first ammendment support.
Franchie. Lockerbie- it is mentioned under 1988 ^ flight 103 over Scotland
May 26th, 2008 at 9:12 amrightangle, yeah, my eyes were tired, it was too late here
May 26th, 2008 at 9:20 amSo, let me get this straight. When President Bush warns us of possible threats and reminds us to remain steadfast in our resolve, it’s fear mongering for political gain. When Obama says we’re no safer than before in order to scare people into thinking that Bush’s policies have hurt our security, it’s just accepted without question? Interesting.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:50 am