Posted on 10/21/2003 5:05:03 AM PDT by OESY
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:09 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The new and overriding predicate of American policy -- foreign, defense, security, domestic -- is to ensure that 9/11 never happens again. If the terrorists managed to mount a second such attack anywhere in the U.S., the consequences would be destructive for the nation and calamitous for the administration. The dominant unspoken thought of the president of the U.S. must therefore be: "I will take whatever action is required to protect America from attack so that it will not be said of me 50 years from today that I was asleep at the switch at a seminal moment in our history."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Please note that he has been out of office for 10 years. Apparently, the majority of Canadians have "moved on" and no longer act as our friends.
Only people who judge them by their actions. And by their words. (Not all Canadians all the time.) Abusing teenage hockey players visiting Quebec is not universally recognized as a sign of friendship, as I am sure Ann Coulter would be glad to point out.
Therefore, I now think the odds of another terrorist strike on American soil before the next election to be much higher than I had previously thought and, no doubt, very much higher than suspected by most Americans who likely do not think about it very much at all.
In the relatively quiet time since 9/11 the Bush administration has made giant strides in this war. I am sure there are great successes about which we are wholly ignorant. There have also been successes which we know about but do not necessarily credit to Bush such as the turning of the upper levels of the Pakistani government and the glimmerings of a turn around in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, because Ben Laden remains at large, evidently alive and blustering, any successful attack against America could be problematic for the administration come election time.
I hope I am wrong in this gloomy assessment, and that the unheralded successes in this war have so disrupted the enemy infrastructure that he cannot mount even an isolated attack.
As for Mulroney's trial balloon mooting a new UN, I think America should play if for propaganda purposes but not be deceived that it will lead to anything, either good or bad.
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