Tough Times for Radical Islam

But there is a final development that caused headaches for radical Islam -- the end of the American hysteria over the legality and morality of its own antiterrorism measures.

Although candidate Barack Obama was elected as the anti-Bush who promised to repeal the Bush protocols and end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Obama did no such thing. He continued the Bush-Petraeus withdrawal plan in Iraq. He escalated in Afghanistan. He kept all the antiterrorism measures that he had once derided. And he expanded the Predator drone assassination missions fivefold, while sending commandos inside Pakistan to kill -- not capture and put on trial -- bin Laden. He ignored most recommendations from Attorney General Eric Holder and guessed rightly that his own left-wing base would keep largely quiet.

The effect was twofold. America kept up the pressure on terrorists and their supporters. And the liberal opposition to our antiterrorist policies simply evaporated once Obama became commander in chief.

Some who once protested the removal of Saddam lauded the efforts to do the same to Gadhafi. Those who once sued on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo joined the government to ensure the Predator drone targeted-killing program continued.

The chances in 2012 that the buffoonish Michael Moore -- who once praised the Iraqi insurgents -- will be again feted as a guest of honor at the Democratic National Convention, as he was in 2004, or that Cindy Sheehan will grab headlines once again, are zero.

Polls show that Obama's America is still just as unpopular among Middle Easterners as it was under George W. Bush. But now a much different media assumes that the problem is theirs, not America's. In this brave new world, the American liberal community is now invested in the continuance of the once-despised Bush antiterrorism program and the projection of force abroad -- and has little sympathy for foreign criticism of an American president.

Quite simply, bin Laden's world of 2001 no longer exists. That's mostly good for us, but quite bad for the dead terrorist's followers.