Rich Lowry gets his federal kneepads:
There has been one constant in the five years since the terror attacks of 9/11 — there has been no follow-up attack in the United States. It is the most blessed non-event in recent American history. Of course, that could change in an awful instant. It is nonetheless the signal accomplishment in the war on terror. While the smoke was still clearing from downtown Manhattan, no one would have said that the fight against terror should be judged on whether the U.S. is popular abroad or able to spread democracy. The standard was avoiding another attack in the U.S., and by that standard, the war on terror is a tentative success.
There are rival explanations for this success….
I note that he leaves out my explanation for this “success”… every time there is a terror attack, whether it is planes mysteriously falling apart over Long Island, Muslims shooting Jews in Seattle or massive explosions at oil refineries, it is loudly announced that what looks rather like a terrorist attack was, in fact, a mirage, an accident, nothing to look at, carry on about your business. Furthermore, it is an insult to the passengers of the Shoe Bomber flight to credit the government for their actions in saving their own lives.
By Lowry’s own standard, then, the war on terror is already a failure. Considering the 96,000 Muslims imported in 2005 courtesy of that same government, one has to wonder how much longer it will be before the Three Monkeys will drop this line of argument just as they dropped the once-popular German Occupation analogy eighteen months ago.