Five Years Later

last updated 8 January 2015

Say this for President Bush, said The New York Times in an editorial. He sure believes in the power of positive thinking. After British authorities foiled a plot by radical Muslims to blow up passenger jets bound for the U.S., the president seized on the Brits' success to announce that 'œwe' are winning the war on terror. 'œAmerica is safer than it has been,' he declared last week. 'œWe're doing everything in our power to protect you.' Would that it were true. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, 'œgaping holes' remain in the U.S.'s defense against terrorist attacks. Due to lack of funding and White House interest, commercial airplanes, in particular, remain potential terrorist weapons. Much baggage and almost all cargo is still often loaded onto planes without passing through explosive-detecting machines. No single watch list has been created to warn against potentially dangerous passengers. Port security is even more primitive: A mere 2 percent of cargo containers reaching these shores are inspected for biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. You can only wonder how different things would be if the disastrous Iraq war hadn't 'œsapped energy, resources, and top-level attention' from the far more urgent need to protect our shores.

Americans aren't quite sure what to believe, said Evan Thomas in Newsweek. Although 63 percent polled say that invading Iraq has not made us safer from terrorism, half of us believe that we're indeed safer than before Sept. 11. There's good reason to be of two minds. As the thwarted bomb plot demonstrates, Western intelligence authorities are coordinating their efforts better than they used to. With so many top al Qaida leaders captured or killed, it appears that many of their new recruits lack discipline, and aren't as well trained. Unfortunately, the latest crop of Islamist fanatics is successfully using Iraq as a worldwide recruiting tool for jihad, and they're both persistent and maddeningly patient. 'œTo them, a 12th-century crusade was only yesterday.'

If we really want to be safer, said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online, we can't rely wholly on X-ray machines and other gizmos. We should be free to use our common sense. It's clear our enemies 'œare overwhelmingly young male Muslims from places such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.' So why don't we target them for special scrutiny? Because civil libertarians would scream about racial discrimination, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But the courts have repeatedly upheld federal programs 'œthat treat groups differently when a 'compelling' public interest can be identified,' such as affirmative action, and racial composition of congressional districts. Surely saving thousands of lives qualifies as a compelling public interest.