Obama's P.R. Helps Terrorists

So, likewise, Obama's efforts to bolster his own credibility in fighting terror are helping our enemies.

The rest of Brennan's quote is also interesting. He said: "Terrorists are not 100 feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill." This line of argument finds its apogee in Michael Moore's famous quote that the chances of being struck by lightning are better than those of dying in a terrorist attack.

The burden of this view, popular in Europe, is in effect to tell the American people to get over it. Sure, we lost 3,000 people on 9-11, but Britain lost 50,000 in the blitz and France suffered the death of 3 million men in World War I. They ask that we put the attack into perspective.

But we take the loss of those 3,000 people quite seriously and refuse to treat it as a mere crime. We see it as a declaration of war and are responding accordingly. That the counter-terrorism point person in the Obama administration is, in effect, asking us to tone down our fear of terrorism is both disappointing and quite alarming.