Have We Been Safer Under Bush? The Empirical Evidence Says Yes

IBD ^ | May 28, 2008 | John Hinderaker

[Kaslin]

The debate over Iraq and the war on terror rages, even amid signs we're winning. John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com recently posted a blog entry answering the perennial question, "Are We Safer?" We rerun it here with his permission.

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 U.S. 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 United Nations 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.

[Steve Van Doorn]

levotb = no more
I take it JimRob is doing fine today!

[angcat]

It's frustrating isn't it? Especially when you have the media who is too incompetent to be bothered by the planning and history of 9/11. Also much of America is loaded with idiots who really do not care how 9/11 was planned and do not have the brain capacity to comprehend the danger we are in.

[DoughtyOne]

19 Saudi Nationals perpetrated 09/11. We now have somewhere around 30,000 Saudi Nationals on our soil.

We have been very fortunate. Bush has skated IMO. We are one event away from people recognizing our position for what it is. And the guy on this watch, will have about a 1% approval rating if it does. If it doesn’t, he will get much more credit than he is due.

We have done the right thing in Iraq. We sucked in the willing terrorists, and liquidated a bunch of them. We caused the foreign terrorists to focus on it, instead of us. That was a reasoned policy. Removing Hussein was a reasoned policy. IMO, Iran and Syria deserve the same treatment.

Right now we are watching Syria grain a stranglehold on Lebanon. It’s going to cause serious problems. We should step in and use it as a reason to make some changes in Syria. We won’t.

I agree with some of what Bush has done. I think he has still made some serious mistakes. Asking Saudi Arabia to increase their oil production in public was one of them. It seriously hurt his image in a region where he needs to be seen as strong.

Bush has been a mixed bag IMO. I don’t hate the guy, but he has been a dismal failure. We’re going to pay for it on November 4th one way or the other.