Will the Next Attack Get Our Attention?

American Thinker ^ | January 17, 2007 | J. Peter Mulhern

[neverdem]

What will our politics look like the day after the next time jihad comes home to America?

Ever since September 11, 2001 political leaders of every stripe have been telling us that another catastrophic attack is inevitable. Consensus regarding terrorism begins and ends with the cliché "when not if."

Our leaders speak as if they can avoid responsibility for the next attack by predicting it. They don't seem aware that a grieving and enraged public isn't likely to get much satisfaction from a chorus of "I told you so."

Let's suppose that conventional wisdom is uncharacteristically correct about the prospects for more terrorism in the United States. How will the American public deal with the political class that saw attacks coming years ahead and frittered away the opportunity to deter them?

The whole relevant political spectrum from Nancy Pelosi to George W. Bush has misled the American public about our enemies. Nobody who matters has been willing to identify the people we need to fight, describe their motivations accurately and explain how we can defeat them.

Instead we remain embroiled in a sterile debate about how to control the violence in Iraq. President Bush has just unveiled his "new way forward" which involves more troops and more aggressive and tenacious tactics in trouble spots. He hasn't announced any plans to engineer regime change in either Syria or Iran.

Democrats are gearing up to make a lot of noise in support of ignominious withdrawal from Iraq before gracelessly accepting the inevitable reality that the Commander in Chief calls the shots in wartime. This way they hope to appease their defeatist constituency without having to take the fall for yet another surrender and the blood bath that would certainly ensue.

The entire discussion is surreal.

The public debate gives very little indication that our troubles in Iraq are just one part of a much larger strategic problem. It is as if the allies, having conquered Sicily in August 1943, agreed that the troops should all come home without bothering to invade the mainland of Europe, either in Italy or France.

Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt reduced to arguing with congressional critics over whether American forces should leave the Sicilian quagmire immediately or stick around long enough to eradicate the Mafia and teach the Sicilians to rise above traditional vendettas. When a war leader has to engage in that sort of debate, things aren't going well.

Pacifying Iraq is not now and never has been an important end in its own right. A peaceful and cooperative Iraq might be useful in our ongoing struggle against the terror masters in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran. But, apart from George Bush's insubstantial notion that Iraq can be a democratic inspiration to the rest of the Arab world, our leaders don't seem to have any idea how we can use the conquest of Iraq to undermine our enemies in the surrounding countries. They have no apparent intention of doing so.

President Bush doesn't talk about using the conquest of Iraq as a weapon against Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Instead he never misses an opportunity to claim that our goal in Iraq is to create the conditions that will make it possible to bring our forces home. But the idea that we have a job to do in Iraq that will come to an end any time in the foreseeable future is absurd.

We may establish a political equilibrium in Iraq that looks very much like peace but that equilibrium will last only as long as we have significant forces there to maintain it. When we insisted on a democratic Iraq we ensured that Iraq would remain dependent on American troops indefinitely. Apparently, the Bush administration either forgot or never learned that most "democracies" look a lot like two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Without our supervision any elected Iraqi government will rapidly degenerate into an extraordinarily well-equipped sectarian militia serving the interests of the Shiite majority. Sunnis, with the support of friendly neighboring governments, will fight to resist Shiite domination. Kurds will seize whatever advantage they can from the resulting chaos as will Iraq's neighbors, in particular Iran.

The result will be a humanitarian disaster. It will also be a fatal blow to our war against militant Islam. It doesn't matter whether we leave Iraq in chaos or leave after order is established and then watch it lapse back into chaos. Either way we will suffer a catastrophic defeat.

We have taken on an imperial role in Iraq and Great Britain's imperial history is instructive. When you assume the task of running a foreign country there is no tidy way to disengage. The British East India Company conquered India starting in 1757. After the Sepoy Mutiny a hundred years later, the British Government took over and ran India for 89 years. It began trying to establish Indian home rule in the 1890's.

Nonetheless, when the British left India in 1947, their former colony dissolved in an orgy of sectarian cleansing and divided into warring nations which now threaten each other with nuclear weapons.

If we decamp for North America and let the house of cards we constructed in Iraq collapse we will be utterly discredited in the Middle East and around the world. Then we can hunker down and wait for the next terrorist attack to give us yet another opportunity to demonstrate our impotence.

Very few politicians of any party will ever be willing to take responsibility for this result. At some level they all know that any person or party that gets blamed for defeat in Iraq will also get blamed for the next terrorist attack. President Bush will talk about bringing troops home and, with luck, he may preside over some troop reductions. But he will bequeath a substantial American presence in Iraq to his successor.

Democrats may get some short term political advantage from arguing that we should turn or backs on Iraq and disengage from the effort to detoxify the Middle East. Dogs get a short term kick out of chasing cars, but the smart ones know enough to avoid catching one. Every time the issue of our commitments in Iraq comes up Democrats will huff and puff and point fingers. Then they will participate in perpetuating those commitments. That's what the new Democrat majority in Congress is about to do. That's what the next Democrat president will do. World without end, amen.

The surreal debate about Iraq is a thin veil covering the real political preoccupation of our time - the competition to assign blame for the next terrorist attack to somebody else. Democrats are setting themselves up to argue that the Republican administration is at fault because it hasn't been diligent enough about homeland security and because it has fanned the flames of Islamofascism by fighting in Iraq. Republicans are setting themselves up to argue that Democrats are at fault for refusing to take militant Islam seriously and working to frustrate our every effort to confront it.

Who wins this cat fight? Probably nobody.

The next terrorist attack should give us a relatively lucid moment. It will strike us like a bolt of lightening and illuminate the geopolitical landscape. Even without leadership the American people might see Iraq in context, if only for a moment They may suddenly see that our entire political class has been indulging itself in meaningless partisan disputes when it should have been teaching our Arab and Persian enemies a bitter lesson about the consequences of messing with the eagle.

It isn't a forgone conclusion that any attack, no matter how savage, would make most Americans understand that we are fighting for our lives and doing so blindfolded with our hands in our pockets. Many, perhaps most, of us would react to another assault by redoubling their already heroic efforts to ignore unpleasant realities. But it is also possible that most of us might suddenly see just how feckless and irresponsible America's politicians have been since 9/11.

If we wake up one morning to find that one of our great cities is a smoking ruin or that our children are dying by the million from some mysterious disease, the odds are that America's contempt for its leaders of both parties will know no bounds.

What then?

Something similar happened to Britain at the outset of World War II when the people woke up to discover that their leaders had blundered into a war which they were utterly unprepared to fight. Most of Britain's leaders were thoroughly discredited by the events leading up to the war, but there was one important exception. Winston Churchill had spent a decade warning that war was coming and urging his country to head it off or, failing that, to be ready. When war came, he was the logical person to lead the government.

Where is our Churchill?

[R. Scott]

What will our politics look like the day after the next time jihad comes home to America?

If it results in a large body count, the political scene will be much the same as the first few months after 9/11 - and might last as long before we return to politics as usual. How long it lasts will depend on Hollywood influenced opinion polls.

[Coldwater Creek]

I agree with your very sensible view!

[Turborules]

This is the winner for today...To infiltrate behind enemy lines is not easy, but a trained and determined enemy will find a way...reguardless the number of patrols or the fences...we have a winning plan that has been short sheeted by the left, MSM, and faint will of our feckless politicians...

[cooldog]

BINGO!

Root and branch ... whatever it takes.

[dearolddad]

If you are going to win, you have to bring the fight to them where they are.

DB, I agree with you 1000%!! There is no way in hell that we can win this war as long as it is a PC war.

[Gritty]

You've nailed it perfectly in Post #37.

Mulhern is exactly correct in his analysis. We are now in the Pre-WWII phase, denying the real threat. Simultaneously, we are pretending we can appease it with half-measures or compromise, hoping the bogeyman will go away and let us go back to sleep.

This is what Political Correctness and Multiculturalism have wrought: a self-imposed blindness and institutional paralysis!

Frankly, I am no longer certain another massive attack will wake us up. We have been too long on a fool's path since our 9/11 wake-up call, sleeping in to the obvious. The longer we stay on this wrong path, the more heavily we become invested in our delusions.

A disaster in the Middle East or a massive attack on our shores is as likely to provoke retaliation against the wrong people to lay misplaced blame for our chilling failure of diagnosis and leadership - especially if the Democrats gain complete control.

As Mulhern says, where is our Churchill? I don't see him, yet. One could see Churchill in 1936, 1937 and 1938. Churchill was pretty obvious and you couldn't miss him. Where is he now?

[Mr. Jeeves]

Where is our Churchill?

His name is Newt Gingrich, but he won't be allowed anywhere near power until the situation is as dire as it in Briatain in 1941.

[Remole]

Either Gingrich or Santorum. I don't see any other statesman or woman on the horizon that sees the issues as clearly as they.

[95 Bravo]

That might be a blessing in disguise. It would save us having to hunt them down one at a time and hang them all.
Our government has, in my opinion, ceased to serve anyone but itself. We couldn't be any worse off without them.

[Scarchin]

An attack in the near future would vault Rudy into the limelight IMHO and provide a deathblow to the Dems.

[boss man]

I disagree. I believe we will see a repeat of the Spain train attack in late summer 2008 as the presidential election heats up.

This 1st phase attack will be about 100 mini cells of maybe 5-6 imbedded terrorists attacking soft targets such as malls, elementary schools, businesses, hospitals, etc. The message from the terrorists will be to blame the Bush Administration policies for this "retaliation".

Basically, the terrorists will be saying "Vote Democratic or these attacks WILL continue." The MSM will reinforce this "choice", aided by the left and PC mentality of this country.

The Democrat candidate will promise a more diplomatic, peaceful approach to ending terrorism. The sheeple will fall in lockstep after hearing CBS-NBC-ABC-MSNBC-PBS jam it down our throats night after night after night. The Democrat candidate WILL cakewalk into the White House in January 2009.

The Islamic demands will be off the proverbial chart, but the Democrats will try to meet a good number of them. But not all. That is all the extremist Muslims need to see, and they will use that as a reason to resume the attacks.

This country will then bear witness to a MAJOR terrorist attack that is nuclear or biological. THAT is the one that will kill 200,000 + and lead to absolute chaos in this country. The Dems will be speechless over the Islamic betrayal and have zero control.

It is then the "USA's Churchill" will need to step to the fore and try to restore what will be a shredded country.

[Scarchin]

I disagree that people will not be enraged if children are attacked. My sense is that folks will get real about the true enemy - Islam - and respond in kind.

I don't think people are that ignorant/foolish.

[Fishrrman]

From the article:
If we wake up one morning to find that one of our great cities is a smoking ruin or that our children are dying by the million from some mysterious disease, the odds are that America's contempt for its leaders of both parties will know no bounds.

What then?

I think a truly devastating attack (nuclear) could threaten American democracy itself to the very foundations. A "Seven Days In May" situation.

Such an attack will shake the country to its foundations. This happened at Pearl Harbor, but I feel confident in stating that America's "foundations" in 1941 were significantly stronger than they are _today_.

Yes, the American foundation is still there. But like an old bridge, look closer and the understructure has become criscrossed by cracks and fissures since the 1960's. The cultural - and I daresay racial - coherence that bound the nation before that time is no longer present, and the media, academics and governmental elites seem to be doing everything within their power to further erode it.

And for exactly this reason, I wonder about the ability of the country to culturally withstand a truly horrendous attack (many times worse than the World Trade Center).

With [what appears to be] the coming inevitability of Democratic rule in 2009, we may end up with a ruling class that is virtually unwilling and morally unable to stand up to the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced, far greater than the black threat of Nazism. Tell me, honestly: how do you see the likes of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, or Charlie Rangel responding to a nuclear attack on American soil? I cannot honestly see them assuming a Churchillian posture against those who would destroy us.

And with that in mind, I tend to think that if we suffer such an attack - an attack whose likelihood actually _increases_ under Democratic rule - in the face of Democratic disarray and helplessness, and with the civil and economic state of the nation shaken to those [fractured] foundations, it may be up to the military to step seize the reins of action from a paralyzed government.

Yes, I know what this means. I wish it not to happen.

But neither do I see any alternative, other than an utter collaspe of the nation.

Please show me where I'm wrong.

- John

[Scarchin]

Very interesting response.

Perhaps I'm way off, but I've been thinking about a Second American Revolution based on the Founders' premise that citizens must rise up against an unjust government. In the context of gradually eroding liberties (property rights, food bans, smoking bans, taxes) and a failure to TRULY attack and defeat the enemy.

[redstates4ever]

Of course, Mulhern is speaking about the next LARGE Jihadi attack in America.

After all, we have seen individual Muslims, taken by 'sudden jihadi syndrome,' try to run down students with an SUV in NC, use a 13-year-old as a hostage/sheild to gun down Jewish women in Seattle, open fire at the El Al desk at LAX, try to blow up a football stadium full of football fans in OK and more.

And we still sleep.

I am begining to think that NOTHING can hold the attention of this MTV nation.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

There's always the chance the next hit will be in Washington while congress is in session...

Looking on the bright side? I like that. :-)

[gotribe]

Agree wholeheartedly. The media is very culpable in this mess. I guess if what you really are saying is that the president of the United States is powerless against the media, then that may be worse than the iraqi mess.

[gotribe]

That's an excellent point. Never thought of it that way. Much better to clearly ID people, not their tactics, to wage war against.

[USMA '71]

Where is our Churchill?

One could make the case that he is back in Pennsylvania in the form of one Rick Santorum.

[matt1234]

Newt Gingrich is beginning to sound a lot like Churchill.

I immediately thought of Newt.