When all is said and done, it still is as simple as that.
Bump for VDH!!!! Thanks for the entire post.
This is the middle part of the Hanson article from the [middle of a paragraph] place of quidsnips snip--
The Taliban and Saddam were, of course, bad sports. But really, going all the way over there to topple them, implant democracy, and change the status quo of the Middle East? Tsk, tsk, tsk — well, that was a bit much, was it not?
Terrorist killing, like the first World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole, certainly was not seen as the logical precursor to 9/11 — the expected wages of a quarter century of appeasement that started with the weak Carter response to the Iranian hostages and was followed by dead soldiers, diplomats, and tourists about every other year. No, these were "incidents" like 9/11 itself — "law-enforcement" issues that called for the DA, writs, and stern prison sentences, the sort of stuff that barristers like Kerry, Edwards, Kennedy, and McAuliffe handle so well.
This attitude is part of the therapeutic view of the present struggle that continually suggests that something we did — not the mass murdering out of the Dark Age — brought on our present bother that is now "the focus of our lives." We see this irritation with the inconvenience and sacrifice once more reemerging in the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, and the New York Times: We, not fascists and Islamist psychopaths, are blamed for the mess in Iraq, the mess in Afghanistan, the mess on the West Bank, and the mess here at home, but never credited with the first election in 5,000 years in Afghanistan or consensual government replacing autocracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
Sometimes our problems arise over our past failure to chastise the Russians over Chechnya. Or was it not enough attention to Mr. Arafat's dilemmas? Or maybe we extended prior support for corrupt sheiks? All that and more — according to rogue CIA "experts," best-selling authors, and the omnipresent Richard Clarke — earned us the wrath of the Islamists. Thus surely our past transgressions can be alleviated by present contrition, dialogue, aid, and policy changes of the European kind.
---snip---
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NRO is asking for wide dissemination. Snipping is not really what they had in mind!