WE HEAR YOU, AND NOW YOU'LL HEAR FROM US

"He played upon our feeeaarrrrs!!!!!"
-Al Gore

In the summer of 2001, almost a decade after the World Trade Center had a car bomb detonated in its basement car garage, the New York Times ran this article:

The Declining Terrorist Threat

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact. While many crimes are committed against Americans abroad (as at home), politically inspired terrorism, as opposed to more ordinary criminality motivated by simple greed, is not as common as most people may think.
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Part of the blame can be assigned to 24-hour broadcast news operations too eager to find a dramatic story line in the events of the day and to pundits who repeat myths while ignoring clear empirical data. Politicians of both parties are also guilty. They warn constituents of dire threats and then appropriate money for redundant military installations and new government investigators and agents.

Finally, there are bureaucracies in the military and in intelligence agencies that are desperate to find an enemy to justify budget growth. In the 1980's, when international terrorism was at its zenith, NATO and the United States European Command pooh-poohed the notion of preparing to fight terrorists. They were too busy preparing to fight the Soviets. With the evil empire gone, they ''discovered'' terrorism as an important priority.

I hope for a world where facts, not fiction, determine our policy. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

Just two months later, the worst terrorist attack in American history took place in America.

The writer was Larry Johnson, an intelligence analyst at the Clinton White House. He believed terrorism was not much of a threat, and that the US should focus its energies on other problems. President Bush disagreed, and was working on a new approach to deal with terrorism (albeit a bit too slowly). Larry Johnson, of course, was catastrophically wrong in his analysis and entire world view. That didn't stop him from being a darling of the left and the legacy media as he continually attacked President Bush for being all wrong. If your politics are right and your target is correct, then being demonstrated a fool and utterly mistaken simply is irrelevant to the left.

Well its been nearly a decade since the World Trade Center ceased to be and the New York Times is at it again, or so it seems. This time the writer is Scott Shane, a national security expert and reporter at the newspaper:

Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears

Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a young Jordanian was charged with trying to blow up a skyscraper; in Springfield, Ill., a prison parolee was arrested for trying to attack the local federal building. Meanwhile, the Obama administration struggled to decide whether sending many more troops to Afghanistan would be the best way to forestall a future attack.

But important as they were, those news reports masked a surprising and perhaps heartening long-term trend: Many students of terrorism believe that in important ways, Al Qaeda and its ideology of global jihad are in a pronounced decline — with its central leadership thrown off balance as operatives are increasingly picked off by missiles and manhunts and, more important, with its tactics discredited in public opinion across the Muslim world.
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Even those who are convinced Al Qaeda is growing weaker offer a cautious prognosis about what that might mean. They say that what is growing less likely is an attack on American soil with a toll equal to or greater than that of 9/11. But they concede that the example of Al Qaeda will continue to produce copycats: “Bin Laden has given others a narrative, a grand story of struggle, and he’s given them tactics as well,” Dr. Mandaville said.

Dr. Sageman said the United States should approach the threat not with hysteria, but with a careful analysis of the motives and patterns of people drawn into violent plotting.

Scott Shane, as Sweetness and Light points out, is the "expert" who said that leaking the name of the CIA agent who interrogated Khalid Sheik Mohammed was perfectly acceptable. From the articles on the topic by Mr Shane, I get the impression he felt differently about the name of non secret agent (by contrast) Valerie Plame being leaked.

Now, he's not entirely wrong. Al`Qaeda is basically in ruins and terrorism as a tactic has apparently fallen into disrepute among Muslims around the world. It isn't accomplishing anything useful for them, and clearly poking the eagle gets you clawed to pieces. And as Rush Limbaugh, taking a cue from noted:

This is the same New York Times who told us that everything we were doing in the war on terror was a waste, it was a bust, we had no business being in Iraq, Afghanistan, ah, really shouldn't be there, either, just capture Bin Laden. Now all of a sudden they say we're succeeding or did succeed so well that al-Qaeda is so fractured and disoriented that there's no reason to fear terror attacks. That's what the sum total of this story is, we really have an unrealistic fear of future terrorist attacks, and there are quotes from terrorism experts in this.

The problem with Mr Shane's article is that his approach is based on the idea that the US responded to 9/11 out of fear. That we shouldn't act from fear, but in careful study, that the past policy was defined by fear of terrorism. When I heard Al Gore's cartoonish speech decrying President Bush for playing on the fears of the left, something occurred to me.

When 9/11 happened, it was a sudden, shocking stab in the heart of New York City, the mecca of the left. All the cushy leftist Manhattanite elites suddenly got mugged by reality: there really are bad guys who really want to do evil to you, and they really will unless stopped. When they saw that, they felt raw, chilling fear. The terror part of terrorism worked with them, they were affected how the bad guys hoped. That's how the left reacted.

The right reacted like President Bush: steely rage and determination to see justice done. A desire for the US to stomp on the people who planned this, to destroy their ability to make this possible again, and to finally take decisive, crushing action against the murderous scum who had been doing it all this time. The speech President Bush made on the ruins of the World Trade Center was the height of his presidency, he sounded strong, courageous, and right.

The left, had they not seen and experienced this leadership, would have been inclined to find ways to appease and mollify this evil. The shock was terrifying to them, they would have tended to (and certainly many pressured the president to) react exactly how the terrorists wanted. The purpose of terrorism is to shock and frighten the public into pressuring their government into taking actions the terrorists desire. Lacking strong leadership, that could have happened.

The left responded with temporary fear and shock, but once it wore off, began to return to normal. They aren't that bad, it was just a small group, we really did bring it on ourselves by our actions in the middle east, we have to understand their rage and pain, you know the drill. Over the last eight years we've heard and read plenty of it in every conceivable forum. When President Bush took action in Afghanistan, it was during the shock period of the left's reaction. When that wore off, they decided a war on terror was too much, it would only make them angry.

So Al Gore was right, from his perspective: President Bush did take action which they supported based only on their fear. When that wore off, they felt angry that they'd let it happen. All those Democratic party congressmen who voted for the authorization giving President Bush their approval to fight against terrorism wherever he found it started to look for ways to back out.

The right never was responding out of fear. We always knew the terrorists were out there, we have always known there are evil men in the world who will do evil to us if allowed. That's why we're always for a strong national defense and a strong foreign policy profile. Because the bad guys must know we're not just able, but ready to take action if they dare do evil to our nation, whatever nation that happens to be for you and I. The left saw terror alerts and speeches about fighting evil as based on fear and fearmongering.

They never were, not from the right. They were information mongering, and taking decisive action to do what was right. They were about justice, and about not standing by as men do evil. The left's perception of this was how they saw things not how we did. And this article about how we have to abandon the fear based decisionmaking of the past is part of that basic worldview confusion. Making smart choices based on good information and an understanding of the enemy isn't fear, its reason.

Mr Shane is right: we shouldn't act out of fear. He's just wrong when he assumes the US was. Just two days before this article, Scott Shane wrote about a recent foiled terror attack in Missouri, and not long before that he wrote about other terrorist attacks. The system put into place by the Bush administration is still getting results: not out of fear, but out of a desire for justice and to stop evil.

*Hat tip Steve Gilbert at the blog Sweetness and Light for the NYT stories.