Nasty Little Man

A list of op-eds and editorials from the week

There has been a host of op-eds and editorials worth note this week.

New York Times, John Tierney, columnist: Waiting for al-Qaeda (subscription required)

The Bush administration likes to take credit for stopping domestic plots, but it's hard to gauge whether these are much more than the fantasies of a few klutzes. Bush also claims that the war in Iraq has diverted terrorists’ attention there, but why wouldn't global jihadists want the added publicity from attacking America at home, too? Al Qaeda's leaders threatened in 2003 to attack America — along with a half dozen other countries that haven’t been attacked either.

Mueller's conclusion is that there just aren’t that many terrorists out there with the zeal and the competence to attack the United States. In his forthcoming book, "Overblown," he argues that the risk of terrorism didn't increase after Sept. 11 — if anything, it declined because of a backlash against Al Qaeda, making it a smaller and less capable threat than before. But the terrorism industry has been too busy hyping Sept. 11 and several other attacks to notice.
(snip)
Compared with past threats — like Communist sociopaths with nuclear arsenals — Al Qaeda's terrorists are a minor problem. They certainly don't justify the hyperbolic warnings that America's "existence" or "way of life" is in jeopardy, or that America must transform the Middle East in order to survive.

There undoubtedly will be more terrorist attacks, either from Al Qaeda or others, just as there were before 2001. Terrorists might strike Monday. There will always be homicidal zealots like Mohamed Atta or Timothy McVeigh, and some of them will succeed, terribly. But this is not a new era. The terrorist threat is still small. It's the terrorism industry that got big.

The Patriot News, editorial: Detainees

Under our Constitution, the most heinous criminal is entitled to due process and a day in court. This is what separates us from many other countries around the world where the rights of the accused are not protected, and torture and gross mistreatment to obtain confessions are routine.

Philadelphia Inquirer, editorial: Remember 9/12?

On that day, we had the world's sympathy and, for a short while after, its admiration. "We are all Americans," European newspaper headlines declared. You could not pay the same publications enough euros to print the same headline today.

Why? Because of the ways we did not change for the better, and the ways we changed for the worse.

In these five years, the nation has been poorly led. History's verdict on those men and women (of both parties) will be severe.

Ny Times, editorial: 9/11/06

When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy. Homeland security is half-finished, the development at ground zero barely begun. The war against terror we meant to fight in Afghanistan is at best stuck in neutral, with the Taliban resurgent and the best economic news involving a bumper crop of opium. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 when it was invaded, is now a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists.

Listing the sins of the Bush administration may help to clarify how we got here, but it will not get us out. The country still hungers for something better, for evidence that our leaders also believe in ideas larger than their own political advancement.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 12:22 PM