Another thing I don't get about al Qaeda (and I guess "al Qaeda inspired" terrorists). What is it with these guys and airplanes? I don't want to send the wrong message here. I hope that they will continue in their historical total lack of imagination about what to attack. I definitely hope that they won't turn their sights to container ships, other transport networks, or industrial infrastructure. It's already enough of a problem detecting plots when they're limited to a narrow spectrum. But the modern world is incredibly insecure and there are massive opportunities to to widespread damage that will we never be able to secure fully.

If I thought I could avoid terrorism merely by eschewing air travel and staying away from a few, mostly Northeastern, landmarks, then the world would be relatively safe and predictable. I'm too much of a pessimist to really believe that, but recent history has done little to contradict that simplistic view.

One of the more depressing things about the past five years is the total pass the Bush administration has got on its incredible incompetence in managing the quite simple task of taking out Al Qaeda's leadership, from the Rumsfeldian fiasco of Tora Bora (another "not enough troops on the ground" scenario, with that suspicious order of the Pentagon not to put troops on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- essentially letting OBL go) to the non-dispute about the 'war on terrorism', which of course is a camouflage for the Bush disinclination to take terrorists seriously. Most commentators think that if America is hit again, it would boost Bush - which just shows how pitiful the Dem surrender on foreign policy has been. If the Democrats had created the right kind of non-bipartisan atmosphere in which there was a real focus on the Bush administration's terrible record -- from finding out what Bush did and didn't do in August, 2001, to finding out what happened in the campaign against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan from November 2001 to March 2002, to investigating what happened to the mounds of weapons in the looting of Iraq in 2003 -- there would be a justified sense that this administration substitutes talk for action, and that its actions betray incompetence at best, and ideological blindness at worst.

This, not Beinart's idiot muscular liberalism, is the key to Dem success. But it is a key few of them want to use - the old bipartisan instinct still kicks in, as though the Bush administration was filled with Achesons and this was the new Cold War.

Or if your the Bush admin you ignore the ringing alarm clock and shoot the phone, then when the alarm clock keeps ringing you keep shooting more phones:-)

I can only take this as a good sign. Perhaps people will remember that al-Qaeda is the enemy that hit us on 9/11 and, presumably, is the enemy we ought to be targeting in our post-9/11 policies. Not Iran, not Hezbollah, not any old Muslim who says something we don't like, but al-Qaeda and those inspired by it -- the actual terrorist menace to the United States.

Dont hold your breath on that one... the probability that this wont be used to bolster support for iraq/israel is roughly zero.

I've always felt this pedantic line of argument shows how out of touch you are with the American public. After 9/11 we did not declare war on the Gambino family, we declared war on the international Mafia. Your argument is since Saddam financed the Genovese family we had no right to be mad at him, they didn't pull off the Luftansa job. Your debater's points may work in your circles, where the instinct to blame America first is always evident, but most McCain/Lieberman centrists do not see this country as an evil empire, and they look on your arguments as quibling over irrelevant details.

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