Seven years. Zero attacks. And almost zero credit.
President George W. Bush deserves better.
Seven years ago today, evil men killed 2,998 innocent people in
New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They did so in service of an
evil ideology. And they were directed by evil, small-souled
creatures protected by a rogue state halfway across the world. The
creatures called their murderous organization Al-Qaeda, which means
“The Base” — a name appropriate for an organization that serves
man’s base instincts, for base motives, to achieve base
results.
At the time, there was every reason to believe that Al-Qaeda
would strike again on American soil. There was every reason to
believe that even if the free world could track down Base leader
Osama bin Laden and pulverize him, the cost in the meantime would
be the endurance of more terror — mechanical, chemical,
biological, maybe even nuclear.
President Bush said no. Not on his watch. Not if he could help
it.
And for seven years, he has backed it up. The only terrorism on
American soil since 9/11 came from a home-grown scientist, clearly
disturbed, who sent some mail laced with anthrax for a few scary
weeks and spent the next seven years trying to hide his tracks.
Sure, the bad guys have tried again — they’ve planned more plane
bombings, a bridge bombing, an airport bombing, and other assaults
against American civilization — but they were interdicted every
time.
This wasn’t a dog that didn’t bark merely because it felt like
being mute; this was a dog that didn’t bark because it was
forcefully muzzled. And Bush was the one who applied the
muzzle.
HE DID IT by fashioning, with the help of Colin Powell (before
Powell went off the reservation), an incredibly impressive
coalition that went into Afghanistan — even then, liberal pundits
predicted, yes, a “quagmire” in Afghanistan, too — and in
incredibly short order kicked out the rogue regime, killed numerous
members of Al-Qaeda, and chased the remaining ones high into the
hills where they presumably live in caves perfectly suited to their
troglodyte mentality.
Bush did it by directing his government to use all the tools at
its disposal to identify and freeze Al-Qaeda assets, improve
intelligence-gathering (and intelligence-sharing, back and forth,
with anti-terrorist nations), disrupt Al-Qaeda communications, and
track down and kill Al-Qaeda leaders. He did it by getting tough on
other terrorists, too, even ones not directly affiliated with
Al-Qaeda. And he did it by encouraging democratic movements
throughout the Middle East and central Asia, while providing
material support where necessary.
And yes, Bush warded off terrorists by toppling Saddam Hussein’s
dangerous outlaw regime in Iraq. It was a regime that had
repeatedly shot at American aircraft. It was a regime that
demonstrably owned weapons of mass murder and then refused to
account for their removal or their destruction. It was a regime
that had invaded its neighbors, and that had gassed and slaughtered
its own people. And it was most certainly a regime that harbored
terrorists, trained terrorists, and that maintained friendly
communications and at least some operational ties with Al-Qaeda.
Hussein’s Iraq provided asylum for infamous terrorists Abu Nidal
and Abu Abbas. It gave reward money to homicidal Palestinian
suicide bombers. It ran a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak. It
provided asylum for Al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
later founded and ran “Al-Qaeda in Iraq.” An interdicted letter to
him from Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, made
clear that Zarqawi’s efforts in Iraq were an essential part of
al-Qaeda’s plans for conquest — indeed, that “the expulsion of the
Americans from Iraq” was the single essential predicate for “the
establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet.”
Well, Zarqawi is dead now, and so are most of his lieutenants,
and so is his entire Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq organization except for a few
final remnants in isolated last-ditch redoubts.
YES, THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION mishandled Iraq in many ways after
toppling Saddam. The mismanagement began early on, when the State
Department and the Defense Department had conflicting plans and
then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice failed to
effectively coordinate or impose order upon the operation. (One
acquaintance of mine came back from a visit to Iraq in those early
post-Saddam days and said “Quin, man, it’s a clusterfu**.”) John
McCain said early on that we needed more troops and different
tactics, and so did the Weekly Standard, and so did others
— but Bush, contrary to his reputation for being headstrong and
unwilling to listen, instead listened to and deferred too much to
his generals and to Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, who were
honorably but terribly, disastrously wrong.
But here’s where Bush got it right: As Bob Woodward has been
reporting in the Washington Post this week, apparently
unaware that the reporting actually does credit to Bush’s judgment
rather than providing more evidence of bad judgment, Bush stood
tallest when Iraq fell into its worst chaos. Even when almost all
the top military advisers continued to stubbornly advocate a failed
plan, Bush insisted on victory and found a strategy to achieve it.
The “surge” of course has worked wonders, and Iraq is now likely to
be a success — and despite Bush’s earlier mistakes, it would not
have happened if the president had not shown extraordinary
leadership.
And yes, the developing victory in Iraq has indeed played a big
part in the protection of our homeland from terrorist attacks. If
the U.S. has been “bogged down” at times in Iraq, for the
terrorists the fight there has been equal parts catnip and
quicksand. Attracted there by the presence of their American enemy,
they haven’t been able to escape. Hundreds upon hundreds of key
terrorists have been killed in Iraq. Thousands of their followers
have perished. And with their attention, blood, and treasure sunk
into their losing battles there, they haven’t been able to attack
us here within American borders. Also, by exercising their brutal
natures not against infidel Americans but against fellow Moslems,
the jihadists have lost the “hearts and minds” not just of the
Iraqi people but of many of their Islamic brethren worldwide.
President Bush was right all along that success in Iraq would have
beneficial repercussions throughout the Islamic and Arab
worlds.
One of those benefits came early on, when Libya’s Moammar
Ghadafi saw the fate of Saddam Hussein, pronounced himself scared
by it, and began cooperating with the West. Ghadafi turned over
huge stores of weaponry and dismantled his nuclear program — a
program that, the free world discovered, had been far closer to
fruition than had been previously supposed. And now Ghadafi has
hosted a visit from Condi Rice — and, urged on by the dictator’s
pro-American son, Libya is more than likely to become a staunch
American ally in the region.
TO REVIEW: Seven years ago bin Laden enjoyed the state support of
the Taliban, Saddam was in power and bribing his way to greater
autonomy, and Ghadafi was still a serious burr under our saddle.
Now they are, respectively, encaved, embalmed, and enlisted (at
least partly) in our cause.
That’s a pretty darn good record. It comes at the cost of more
than 4,000 dead American service personnel, and more than 30,000
injured. But hundreds of millions of us have, in the meantime, been
safe in our daily lives from jihadist terror. Those American
soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen are heroes of heroes. And
they have been led by a commander in chief who has often been wrong
on tactics, but always right about the ultimate goals and always
determined that their sacrifices be in service to a worthy and
successful cause.
Seven years after 9/11, the victories have been far greater than
the intermittent setbacks. No jihadists have struck within our
borders. Freedom reigns and rings. And President Bush deserves some
thanks.
