Posted on 05/27/2009 4:14:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
"No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." — Edward R. Murrow
Let's talk about the next terrorist attack.
We cannot know what form it will take, where it will occur or what the casualty count will be. But one thing we do know: we know we'll be told it happened because President Obama dismantled the policies of his predecessor.
Indeed, former Vice President Dick Cheney has been pre-emptively making that case ever since he was sprung from his undisclosed location. In a spate of television interviews and a high-profile speech last week, he's contended that Obama's rejection of President Bush's strategies has left us less safe. As proof of the effectiveness of those policies, he points out that the country passed the balance of Bush's term after Sept. 11, 2001, without another act of terrorism.
It is a specious argument.
In the first place, it's not clear to some of us that Obama's changes to Bush's policies have been quite as dramatic as advertised. Yes, the president has done away with the state-sanctioned torture euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation." But on other Bush policies — military tribunals and preventive detention come to mind — Obama has opted, to the consternation of civil libertarians, to tweak rather than discard.
In the second place, Cheney assumes — and asks us to accept — a causal relationship he cannot prove. Bush defenders often do that, pointing to those eight years without an incident as vindication. "He kept us safe," they are fond of saying. But if that's the metric by which we define success, they should be lionizing Bill Clinton, too. Like his successor, he saw a foreign terrorist attack early in his presidency. Like his successor, he got through the next eight years without another one.
It's as if a man who once had a car accident at Fifth and Main were to say the reason he hasn't had another is because he now avoids that intersection. It's a non sequitur dressed up as logic, assuming a causality that does not exist.
This is not to say the administration did not interdict a plot or two. But it's a long way from that to assigning them credit for every bad thing that "didn't" happen after Sept. 11. You cannot prove a negative.
We forget sometimes, but while the events of that day were unique in scope and scale, they were not unique in kind. To the contrary, from the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times to the 1920 bombing of Wall Street to the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham to the 1975 bombing of La Guardia Airport to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City to the 1996 bombing of the Olympic Games in Atlanta to that bright, brittle morning in September 2001 when 3,000 people died, terror has never been a stranger to these shores.
The difference is, the 2001 attack was so vast and horrific it did what none of the others could: it caused us to reconsider the very values that make us who we are, including the right to privacy, the right to free speech and worship, the right of habeas corpus and the right not to be waterboarded into a false confession.
If history is a guide to the future (and it is) then terrorists will hit us again, no matter who is president, no matter what policies he or she sets. Dick Cheney knows this, yet he preys on our fear with politics.
No one denies a need to take every reasonable precaution for security. But we need to get over the idea we can guarantee we are never hit again. You simply cannot make that promise and have left a country worth living in. Or as President Eisenhower reputedly said, "If you want total security, go to prison."
Some of us would prefer not to. Some of us realize that a degree of risk is inextricable from any degree of freedom.
And some of us think freedom is worth it.
The author
Since when do leftists believe in any of those??
Sounds like preemptive propaganda from friends of 0bama.
Hmm...sounds like what the press has been doing at Obamination's behest.
Hunh. If I’m not very much mistaken, none other than Obama’s right hand, Joe Biden, predicted something awful happening on O’s watch, something for which unalloyed allegiance to the O would be the only appropriate response.
There are times when Pitts, liberal though he is, just knocks one over the fence.
This is a strikeout.
My fear is that Obama actually wants a terrorist attack in the same way Clinton felt deprived when 911 happened. They see such things as opportunities to expand government power and establish a dictatorship. That is what I fear such an attack will bring to the US.
Damn, another idiot brotha.
Leonard Pitts?
Never heard of him.
I thought you were talking about Earl Pitts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8cFc1dk5ok
Of course he does.
He already knows who the perps are, a cabal of Militia members, recently discharged veterans, single issue voters, born again Christians, and the Amish.
He's just wating for them to strike.
I think if Obama told the country that eating dead squirrels raw was a good idea, Pitts would be right behind him telling us what a great idea The Great Spreader uttered. Pitts, like all lib columnists, has his lips firmly glued to Obama’s posterior. It’s like a cult thing. Pitts is totally incapable of deviating from the prescribed lib line.
I think if Obama told the country that eating dead squirrels raw was a good idea, Pitts would be right behind him telling us what a great idea The Great Spreader uttered. Pitts, like all lib columnists, has his lips firmly glued to Obama’s posterior. It’s like a cult thing. Pitts is totally incapable of deviating from the prescribed lib line.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.