DEMOCRATS UNLEARN THE LESSONS OF 9/11

FOR ABOUT a year, Republicans and Democrats agreed on the need to prosecute the war on terror vigorously.

No longer. Nearly all the presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror.

• Howard Dean, replying to a question asking about the death penalty for bin Laden: "I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."

(Days later, under criticism, Dean shifted his position, saying that, "as an American, I want to see he gets what he deserves, which is the death penalty.")

• Richard Gephardt: "I never felt it was inevitable that we had to go to war."

• George Soros: "The war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war... Crime requires police work, not military action."

• And (a blast from the Vietnam past) William Sloan Coffin: After 9/11, the U.S. government should have vowed "to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force."

To appreciate the significance of the Democrats' views requires some background: Although Islamist violence against Americans began in 1979, for 22 years the U.S., regardless of which party was in charge, insisted on reducing the threat to its criminal component.

Because evidence against Iran would not have passed muster in court, for example, the destruction of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killing 63, went unavenged. The U.S. response in 1998 to two embassy bombings in East Africa, killing 224, was to track down the perpetrators, haul them before a court in New York, win convictions and put them away. There was no effort to dismantle the command and control structure, the financial institutions, the cultural milieu or the political ideology that had bred the violence.

Then came 9/11 - and a nation-wide realization that the country faced not just crime but also a military threat. That very day, Bush declared a "war against terrorism." War - not police action.

This new approach quickly had large implications. One was deploying the military to destroy the Taliban. Another (via the Patriot Act) was pulling down the "firewall" dividing law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

For years, criminal investigators pursued information that their colleagues in the intelligence agencies already had. It was like "having your best football players sitting on the bench when you are having your butts beat," notes Barry Carmody, an FBI agent who worked on the Sami Al-Arian terrorism case.

Then the Patriot Act was passed and "everything changed." The authorities could "gamble with 52 cards, not half the deck," Carmody said.

"Holy moly! There's a lot there!" was how another FBI agent, Joe Navarro, characterized the flood of new information in the case of Al-Arian, the notorious professor from South Florida. Navarro described getting hold of it as "one of those awesome moments."

Two months ago, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith formally contrasted the pre- and post-9/11 approaches: Think back, he suggested, to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to the attacks on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia 1996, on the U.S. East African embassies in '98, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

When such attacks occurred, U.S. officials avoided the term "war." The primary response was to dispatch the FBI to identify individuals for prosecution.

Recognizing the Sept. 11 attack as war was a departure. It was President Bush's insight, the wisdom of which is confirmed by the fact that it looks so obvious in retrospect.

But it was obvious for only a while. Now, key Democrats are repudiating this insight and insisting on a return to the pre-9/11 attitudes.

This new kind of war involves criminality, to be sure, but it's still war. To unlearn the painful lesson of 9/11 is a good way to lose that war.

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Official Democrat Party Terrorism Policy

Do Nothing Democrats On The War In Terror
By Tamara Wilhite

D = do-nothing democrat, C = concerned citizen

C: What do we do about the terrorists?

D: Do nothing.

C: Shouldn't we be trying to fight them?

D: Certainly not. If we kill them, they'll hate us.

C: Don't they already hate us?

D: That's beside the point. They don't like us, and we can't give them a valid reason for their hatred of us by killing their cohorts.

C: What about the fact that they've been killing us for years?

D: Soldiers volunteered for that when they volunteered for the military, so their deaths don't count unless it furthers our agenda. Conservative black diplomats serving in Africa don't matter. Dead evangelical missionaries get what they asked for - martyrdom. We shouldn't do anything about those idiots who got themselves killed.

C: What should we do if they continue to attack us at home?

D: Nothing! We can't strike back. That would risk enraging the Arab Street.

C: I thought they already hated us.

D: Yes, but striking out at them would breed more terrorists.

C: Aren't they already breeding terrorists?

D: Yes. But the Muslim minority in this nation is very vocal and very active in increasing their numbers by both local production and foreign imports. We can't risk them being angry with us. They're very conservative, but they can be lulled to the Democratic side. Acting against their friends in the Middle East risks them becoming violent in our own streets.

C: Haven't some of those locally born or naturalized citizens sought to act against the US?

D: We can't assume they did anything. We don't have adequate proof yet.

C: Those men from Lackawanna pled guilty.

D: They haven't run out of appeals, so we can't assume that they're guilty.

C: What can we do to defend ourselves from attack?

D: Converting to Islam is a possibility.

C: If we do nothing, we might not be allowed to make that choice willingly.

D: Nonsense! Islam is a religion of peace!

C: The Sunni and Shiite attacks on each other in Iraq and Pakistan are proof that that's not a safe option. They're throwing suicide bombers at other sects of Islam even as they send them at our allies and us.

D: That's a trivial detail. They hate us because we're oppressing them.

C: How are we oppressing them?

D: We're buying their oil!

C: How is that oppressing them?

D: We're bringing capitalism to their socialist dictatorships. Democracy could only be around the corner if that continued.

C: Then how do we stop oppressing them?

D: We should stop buying their oil.

C: Then how will we keep our economy going?

D: We won't. That's part of the beauty of it. We would just do nothing. No oil imports. No problems.

C: Our economy would stall -

D: More Democratic votes.

C: We'd see the transportation network grind to a stop -

D: More people doing nothing, and that would save the environment, too.

C: Shouldn't we build more power plants here, then, to reduce dependence on their oil?

D: Oh, no.

C: Why not?

D: That costs too much.

C: Per your arguments, it would reduce the terrorist motivations.

D: Yes, but it would provide jobs and power. We can't do that.

C: So you vote to turn off the oil imports and to not bother with a replacement fuel source?

D: Of course! Doing nothing about the supply or the demand issues would bring the whole nation to a stop! Imagine it! Everyone doing nothing ... except being motivated to vote for us because we can solve the crisis!

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