Jewish World Review Sept. 21, 2001 / 4 Tishrei, 5762

Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

What the terrorists saw

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THIS was George Bush's warning to the international terrorists and their sponsors:

"The United States will be firm with terrorists. We will not make concessions.... If we find states supplying money, weapons, training, identification, documents, travel, or safe haven for terrorists, we will respond. Our aim is to demonstrate to these countries that supporting terrorism is not cost-free.... We will bring terrorists to justice. We will ... identify, track, apprehend, prosecute, and punish terrorists. Terrorism is crime, and terrorists must be treated as criminals."

That muscular vow wasn't uttered after last week's atrocities. It was made in November 1988 by then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, who put it in writing, over his signature, on the first page of the Defense Department compendium "Terrorist Group Profiles." Two months later, Bush was sworn in as the 41st president, and if anything seemed clear, it was that he would bring to the Oval Office a cold view of terrorism and a steely commitment to fight it.

He didn't. Like Ronald Reagan before him and Bill Clinton after, Bush did little to stop international terror. The result of that failure was to convince Islamist fanatics that America was weak and gutless, and to feed the audacity that led to the most devastating terrorist attack in US history.

As vice president, Bush had seen terror's effects: He went to Beirut in October 1983, a few days after a car bomb blew up the US military barracks there, murdering 241 Marines. The Reagan administration, he said, was "not going to let a bunch of insidious terrorist cowards shape the foreign policy of the United States." But that was exactly what the Reagan administration did. Soon after the bombing, American forces quit Lebanon. And 18 years later, we have yet to "identify, track, apprehend, prosecute, and punish" the killers who butchered those Marines.

Or the ones who had earlier butchered 49 Americans at the US embassy in Beirut.

Or the ones who hijacked TWA 847 in 1985 and killed US Navy diver Robbie Stethem.

Or the ones who kidnapped CIA Officer William Buckley that same year and tortured him to death.

Or the ones who hanged Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in 1989.

Or the ones who seized one US citizen after another -- Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Alann Steen, Frank Reed, and Joseph Cicippio, among others -- and held them hostage under brutal conditions.

None of these outrages aroused the fury of the US government. Despite all the American blood on their hands, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah were allowed to operate without hindrance, while the regimes in Damascus and Tehran that financed and sheltered them were never forced to pay a price for their hostile behavior.

Even when the United States did retaliate for terrorist attacks, its response was mild and ineffective. To avenge the destruction of Pan Am 103 and the slaughter of 259 innocents in December 1988, the United States was content to prosecute two Libyan operatives who had been involved in the bombing. More hirelings were put on trial after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. When terrorists blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Washington lobbed a few cruise missiles at training camps in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan.

What the US government should have done was root out and destroy the terrorist groups mounting out these attacks. It should have leveled economic, diplomatic, and military penalties against the dictatorial states backing them. It should have behaved like a great power enraged by the murder of its citizens. Instead it did next to nothing. And vicious men saw, and drew the obvious conclusion.

That wasn't all they saw.

They saw the United States label Saddam Hussein "worse than Hitler" and assemble a vast army to fight him -- only to stop the war when his troops were on the run, leaving him as ruthless and dangerous as ever. They saw how Saddam violated the terms of the cease-fire and resumed his quest for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons -- and how the United States drew line after line in the sand, then failed to defend any of them.

They saw Americans cut and run from Somalia because some of their soldiers were killed there. They saw Washington dither for years about how or whether to stop the bloodshed in the Balkans. They saw how easy it was for the Chinese to acquire military secrets, and how surprised Americans were when India and Pakistan went nuclear. They saw that nothing bad happened to nations on the State Department's list of terror-sponsors. They saw a government so unwilling to give offense that it scrapped the term "rogue states" in favor of "states of concern."

All this and more the vicious men saw. And they concluded that America was rich but cowardly, mighty in arms but weak in spirit, unwilling to fight for its principles or to risk its sons in battle. America, they decided, had gone soft. And so the time had come to attack.


Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

09/17/01: Calling evil by its name
09/13/01: Our enemies mean what they say
09/04/01: The real bigots
08/31/01: Shrugging at genocide
08/28/01: Big Brother's privacy -- or ours?
08/24/01: The mufti's message of hate
08/21/01: Remembering the 'Wall of Shame'
08/16/01: If I were the editor ...
08/14/01: If I were the Transportation Czar ...
08/10/01: Import quotas 'steel' from us all
08/07/01: Is gay "marriage" a threat?
08/03/01: A colorblind nominee
07/27/01: Eminent-domain tortures
07/24/01: On protecting the flag ... and drivers ... and immigrants
07/20/01: Dying for better mileage
07/17/01: Why Americans would rather drive
07/13/01: Do these cabbies look like bigots?
07/10/01: 'Defeated in the bedroom'
07/06/01: Who's white? Who's Hispanic? Who cares?
07/02/01: Big(oted) man on campus
06/29/01: Still appeasing China's dictators
06/21/01: Cuban liberty: A test for Bush
06/19/01: The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment
06/12/01: What energy crisis?
06/08/01: A jewel in the crown of self-government
05/31/01: The settlement myth
05/25/01: An award JFK would have liked
05/22/01: No Internet taxes? No problem
05/18/01: Heather has five mommies (and a daddy)
05/15/01: An execution, not a lynching
05/11/01: Losing the common tongue
05/08/01: Olympics 2008: Say no to Beijing
05/04/01: Do welfare mothers a kindness: Make them work
05/01/01: Another man's child
04/24/01: Sharon should have said no
04/02/01: The Inhumane Society
03/30/01: To have a friend, Caleb, be a friend
03/27/01: Is Chief Wahoo racist?
03/22/01: Ending the Clinton appeasement
03/20/01: They're coming for you
03/16/01: Kennedy v. Kennedy
03/13/01: We should see McVeigh die
03/09/01: The Taliban's wrecking job
03/07/01: The No. 1 reason to cut taxes
03/02/01: A Harvard candidate's silence on free speech
02/27/01: A lesson from Birmingham jail
02/20/01: How Jimmy Carter got his good name back
02/15/01: Cashing in on the presidency
02/09/01: The debt for slavery -- and for freedom
02/06/01: The reparations calculation
02/01/01: The freedom not to say 'amen'
01/29/01: Chavez's 'hypocrisy': Take a closer look
01/26/01: Good-bye, good riddance
01/23/01: When everything changed (mostly for the better)
01/19/01: The real zealots
01/16/01: Pardon Clinton?
01/11/01: The fanaticism of Linda Chavez
01/09/01: When Jerusalem was divided
01/05/01 THEY NEVER FORGOT THEE, O JERUSALEM
12/29/00 Liberal hate speech, 2000
12/15/00Does the Constitution expect poor children be condemned to lousy government schools?
12/08/00 Powell is wrong man to run State Department
12/05/00 The 'MCAS' teens give each other
12/01/00 Turning his back on the Vietnamese -- again
11/23/00 Why were the Pilgrims thankful?
11/21/00 The fruit of this 'peace process' is war
11/13/00 Unleashing the lawyers
11/17/00 Gore's mark on history
40 reasons to say NO to Gore

© 2001, Boston Globe