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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 2, 2008 / 29 Sivan 5768

Why we remain safe

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Liberal pundit Michael Kinsley once defined a "gaffe" as a politician inadvertently blurting out the truth. By that standard, Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain, committed a gaffe in an interview June 23 with Fortune magazine. Mr. Black was asked by Fortune editor David Whitford what the impact on the presidential election campaign would be if there were another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.


"Certainly it would be a big advantage to (McCain)," Mr. Black responded. There followed a hypocritical minuet with which we've become too familiar. First, the faux angry response from the Obama campaign: "The fact that John McCain's top adviser says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.


Then, the distancing from Sen. McCain: "I can't imagine why he would say it. It's not true."


Finally, the groveling apology from Mr. Black: "I deeply regret the comments — they were inappropriate."


Mr. Black had said nothing that wasn't true, or that Democratic political consultants don't say in private. When voter attention is focused on national security, Sen. McCain benefits. A terrorist attack would focus voter attention on national security.


But the attention of voters is not focused on national security, chiefly because there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. The number of experts who, on Sept. 12, 2001, would have predicted this happy state of affairs is precisely zero.


The absence of an attack suggests to some, among them Sen. Obama, that there wasn't much of a threat to start with. They want to return to the law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before 9/11, and regard the Bush administration's efforts to surveil terrorists a greater threat to Americans than the terrorists themselves.


Since that approach contributed mightily to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks, the 1998 bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, 9/11, it's no wonder Americans prefer Sen. McCain on security issues.


"Before 9/11, America's counterterrorist capacities were, to put it politely, disorganized, unfocused, poorly staffed and poorly run," wrote former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht. "To President Clinton's credit and great shame, he intellectually understood the nature and horrific potential of bin Ladenism and al Qaida — as he understood, and regularly tasked his senior officials to explain nationally, the dangers of an increasingly restless Saddam Hussein. Yet he could not summon the fortitude to strike devastatingly against al Qaida and its Taliban protector or Iraq."


Doubtless much of our good fortune is due to increased vigilance by the FBI and other security agencies. And some of it is due simply to good luck. But the principal reason why we've been safe at home these last seven years has been the war in Iraq.


Sen. Obama describes the war in Iraq as a "distraction" from the war on terror. But that's not how al Qaida saw it.


In a 2005 letter to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaida's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, described Iraq as "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era."


A few months earlier (December, 2004), Osama bin Laden himself said in an audiotape: "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation."


For al Qaida, Iraq has turned out to be misery and humiliation. The best of its fighters have perished there, and so has its standing in the Arab world. Support for the terror group has vanished within Iraq, and plummeted elsewhere in the Muslim world. Other Islamic fundamentalists, among them Mr. Zawahiri's mentor, "Dr. Fadl," have criticized al Qaida and called for nonviolence.


In 2003, Canadian columnist David Warren hypothesized Iraq would be the flypaper that would lure in al Qaida, and where it would be destroyed. While I doubt this was a deliberate Bush administration strategy, that's the way it's working out. Al Qaida was right that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, but wrong about the outcome. America's Democrats have been wrong about both.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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