The failure of the terrorist efforts in Britain last week was not the product of effective British (and western) intelligence. It was not the product of a border and immigration control system effectively screening foreign terrorists from entering Britain. It was not even the product of the vaunted thousands of TV cameras placed around urban Britain. In Glasgow, it was not even the product of being able to physically block a terrorist's car from driving through the front door of the air terminal.
Success last week was merely the product of dumb luck: Failed terrorist detonators and plucky Englishmen spotting and reporting what they alertly saw.
Amazingly, a British "expert" on television even claimed that the fact that the terrorists were imported rather than home grown was further evidence that the British are winning the war. His far-fetched argument was that the terrorist apparently had to import foreigners because the British government had such a firm control on the local potential terrorists.
Yet I was personally told last year when I was in London by a very senior British counter-intelligence official that they judged there was a pool of more than 100,000 Muslims who might potentially be recruited to terrorism -- and that the British are hopelessly undermanned in their capacity to even monitor several hundred suspects simultaneously.
In a war, any war, it is always dangerous -- and sometimes fatal -- to over-estimate your side's strengths and the enemy's weaknesses.
It may well be that the great debate that we have not yet had (both in the United States and the West) is Ms. Applebaum's assertion that an open, liberal society is an asset in the struggle against radical Islam.
Of course, I devoutly hope that she is right. We all cherish the openness of our society. But what is the value of a once open, but eventually vanquished society? From Lincoln to Wilson to FDR, American presidents during existential wars have always curtailed civil liberties in the interest of effective war fighting.
And I would point out that today we do not celebrate the Declaration of Openness, but rather the Declaration of Independence. It is our liberty from foreign forces -- not the degree of openness between ourselves -- that we celebrate.
There is undoubted wisdom in Ms. Applebaum's recognition that openness is -- all things equal -- a strengthening element in our society. It is certainly a pleasant element. But in the midst of a war with a relentless enemy, we must assess coldly and objectively which of our many "open" features benefit us, and which benefit the enemy.
As a first of such elements to assess, what do we think of the value of thousands of street cameras -- as the free and open British have inflicted on themselves? Is that intrusion into our privacy justified? And after that, what about national biometric identification cards for everyone?
It is a lamentable commentary on the times in which we live (or perhaps on my distorted vision) that I -- who entered politics from the libertarian wing of the Reagan Revolution -- on July 4, 2007 feel compelled to say yes to both the cameras and the cards.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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