Are the New York Times, the L.A. Times and others honoring the threat when they publish classified information about our anti-terrorism methods? Judging from their actions it would appear that Bill Keller at the New York Times, and others, see a greater threat from the Bush administration than from those engaging in acts of jihadist terrorism.
Ron Suskind wrote a book about what he calls Vice President Cheney’s “one percent doctrine” developed in response to 9/11. According to Suskind, Cheney said that “if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction … the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.''
Cheney has said on several occasions that faced with the information we had about Saddam Hussein, following 9/11, the administration would have been irresponsible had it not taken action to remove him from power. This is something that voters will have to consider when they vote in congressional elections this year and in the Presidential election in 2008. As I have written previously, voters will have to ask on which side of the decision-making equation they want their leaders to err in this post-9/11 world.
Jay Tea points out that to honor the threat is not a call for paranoia, but that it is “a fool who hears the threats and ignores them.” He said regarding the seven men in Florida arrested for plotting an attack on the Sears Tower, “After all, five years ago, who would have thought that less than two dozen guys armed with stuff you can buy at a dollar store for less than 20 bucks could end up killing almost 3,000 people in one morning?” On which side of the equation would voters have authorities err?
It has been almost five years since the attacks of 9/11 and there has, thankfully, not been another attack on U.S. soil. Unfortunately, though, many have forgotten the lessons of 9/11. In an interview at the blog, The Real Ugly American, Mort Kondracke addressed this subject:
“I am appalled at how lots of liberals act as though 9/11 never happened. And 9/11 was probably the scariest moment of my life. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis I never mistakenly I never thought we were in any danger of actually having a nuclear war; actually we were in danger but I didn’t know it or I didn’t think it. But the weeks after 9/11 when you didn’t know when you were going to get hit by another terrorist attack, possibly even worse than 9/11 was as scary a moment as I have ever experienced.”
In November we will find out just exactly how many have forgotten, and how many are honoring the threat.