David Warren has a number of thoughts, and Wretchard explicates further.

I agree wholeheartedly.

9/11 only surprised me by magnitude, not by event. I expected a few car bombings, maybe a homicide bombing or two, with the level of violence to ramp up. The fact that we had an enemy was clear from the early 90's, and even before.

But the thing is, that most people that I speak with have no idea about the magnitude of the threat we face.

Most of the left leaning people that I talk to about this aspect of world events have such a different perspective from my own. Initially, after 9/11 most of the chatter regarded the exact nature of the enemy. Who was it that wanted to take us out? I found that most of these folks seemed utterly unwilling to take any kind of definitive stance on who the enemy is. This was, taking into account American cultural values, entirely understandable.

While we all could agree that the whole of the Islamic religion, we could never agree that our enemy may be legitimate and mainstream subset of that group. That is where most people will block off the conversation. Most people are not confortable making these types of distinctions with another culture or religious group. They have been raised not to be comfortable with it. Therefore they never get to the next step.

How big is the problem group? I don't think we have the slightest idea. Nor do I think we will ever know because as Wretchard points out, the distinction between overt and covert supporters is a very fine one. Thus our problem may be huge, or it may not be so bad, but we do need to get on with figuring it out.

However, when having this discussion with some people, you will be frequently accused of being simple minded. This is an interesting charge. What is curious is that many of the world's thorniest problems are that difficult to understand. The Israeli-Palestinian problem, the problems facing South Africa, the Cold War, and the Chinese-Taiwan situation are not hard problems to understand at all.

However, understanding the problem and solving the problems are two entirely different things. I tend to believe some of those problems are insoluble.

Our problems in the GWOT are a real booger. Some of our interests as a nation are in direct contradiction to our interests in the GWOT. Saudi Arabia being a prime example. The Bill of Rights being another. In fact, much of what makes us a great nation creates near fatal flaws in this fight. We have an absolute booger of a problem, and no real solutions. The war in Iraq is not even the end of the beginning.

But the thing is, since most of those on the left are still spinning their wheels trying to get a handle of the nuances of the problem, that they have not begun to contemplate solutions to the problem. This may account for why we hear nothing from that section of the peanut gallery about how we should go about solving the problem.

This would all be fine, but for the fact that our enemies are racing to develop WMD capability. Once Iran gains nuclear capability the stakes of the game change dramatically.

Sooner or later we are going to have to get over this roadblock. Hopefully not under a nuclear mushroom.

People are starting to look at events - especially the 14 suspicious acting Syrians story - and go "something is up."

Well, duh. I know that in part of the blogosphere, the cool pose is that Homeland Security is a big joke that does nothing, and in another part it is all political eyewash trying to drum up votes for Bush, but maybe, just maybe, back in May when Attorney General Ashcroft and Tom Ridge announced a "season of symbolic events that could be attractive targets for terrorism," and earlier this month when Tom Ridge said that "credible reporting now indicates that al-Qaeda is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process," it wasn't a joke.

For the Bush is a big fat liar crowd, such statements conflicted with the President's speech saying that we are safer. Even those who should nominally be on his side, like Jonah Goldberg (though Jonah started dumping on W a little earler), laughed off that assertion. But the truth is that we are much more prepared for a terrorist event, and much more aware of them.

The discussions around the Annie Jacobsen article are "is she telling the truth or exaggerating," and "if she's telling the truth we are all doomed or it's shows that things are working."

Count me in on the "things are working" crowd. No defense is perfect, but an active defense, combined with staying on the offense, is pretty darn good, and a damn sight better than what we had. Remember, John Kerry's idea - such as it is - is to return to what we had in the 90's. A bad idea. That's still the choice: live, and have the French hate us, or die.

UPDATE: Don't think I'm being pollyannish - just because no defense can be perfect, doesn't mean that we could not do better. I'm with John Derbyshire on this particular point: "Why on earth are we letting Syrians into the U.S.A.? Syria is a terrorist-friendly state." If I were king, we wouldn't be. I wouldn't let anyone from the countries AQ is operating in into the US until this whole thing is over. Thing is, I'm not the king, and neither is President Bush. He's the elected (don't start) President of the United States, and he has to navigate the waters of public opinion along with the requirements of national security. Look at the huge uproar over just fingerprinting folks from Middle Eastern countries. The ACLU types and the Harvard and other university administrators and CAIR would have an absolute fit if we shut off all those visitors to the US. You might argue that they shouldn't have a say in our national security, but the fact is that they do. It is the essence of democracy.

So while it could be better, it is also than it could be - better than it has been. And we should be glad when the system works, instead of just complaining about it.

If you just came here from Allah's joint, welcome!

Dunno why that came to mind. It just did. Read some of the other stuff here. Link me. Put me in your bookmarks. Whatever.

Just feeling a little weepy after Oceans 11.

Newsmax is out retailing the "UBL has nukes and he's gonna use them story" again. Nuclear terrorism is indeed a concern. However, I think this particularly story is a fish story. It started back in 1999:

In 1999, the Arabic newsmagazine Al-Watan reported that bin Laden had obtained nuclear material from his Chechen contacts. Reportedly, al Qaeda's Chechen branch paid the Russian mafia $30 million in cash and two tons of opium in exchange for warhead materials which could be used in the making of a "suitcase nuke."

This has been expanded from buying materials to actually buying nuclear weapons. It was one, now it is ten. It keeps getting bigger in the retelling.

But still, maintaining a bugout box is a good idea. Not paranoid, prepared.

A while ago, Andrew Sullivan posted a letter about how the US had lost the respect of the rest of the world because of FAA regulations on flights to the US.

Seems that those specific regulations are the result of this. (Take the time to read the whole thing.)

And of course, there is the terrorist, or something, arrested in the Minneapolis airport.

So, French people can "respect" us, or we can survive. I think that's what the whole election boils down to.

While googling some stuff about the post below, I cam across this from the Washington Post:

The concern about election security stems from the terrorist bombing of trains on March 11 in Madrid in which 190 people and a fetus were killed. The attack helped bring down the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and shortly thereafter U.S. intelligence warned that terrorists have been emboldened by it to want to derail American elections, possibly by launching attacks at the political conventions or around Election Day.

On the one hand, the Post considers the fetus not a person, but does count it among the dead. I guess that's progress.

Lot's of foofaraw about a recommendation from the FEC (not from the Bush administration) to create a statutory provision for delaying Federal elections if for example, a terrorist strike occurs the day of or maybe even the day before an election. Making this sort of provision actually makes sense. We have no Constitutional way of dealing with such a thing. We have more than once visited the concept of Presidential succession in amendments to the Constitution, as circumstances real or imagined showed themselves to be not covered by the original document.

Doing such a thing makes sense - like Congress making plans for a majority of the Congress getting killed all at once - like buying a disability insurance policy. It is the kind of thing you do when you don't need it because when you do, it is too late.

However, the current political climate makes talking about the sensible impossible. We cannot talk about it, because the second it is discussed, it is a conspiracy theory, a plan for George W. Bush to set himself up as dictator for life. So, since we are unable to even discuss it now, I am with Ace on this:

However, if we agree that we will vote on Election Day come hell or high water, I don't want to hear the liberals like Josh Marshall demanding that we have a new vote or extended-voting-period should bombings damage Kerry's electoral chances. Either we agree, in advance, under what circumstances we might alter the rules and timing of voting, or we agree, also in advance, that whatever happens on Election Day, happens.

As I have said before, studying for the Bar has really given me a nice break from trying to keep up with the current news. Since I am not forced to intake a flood of current news, I am instead free to ponder the past news. In my breaks from studying, I find that I get to think about everything we have done in the last few years.

Specifically, I got to thinking about this post. As I stated, Dean Esmay made a good point. However, when he stated that we had survived those incidents, I think he overlooked the fact that we had to go through those incidents in order to survive them. I would prefer not to have spend the next decade going through and recovering from something analagous to the 70's or the 30's or after the American Civil War.

What is so bothersome about the current debate is the utter disconnect of the two parties. Try and go debating with someone who is anti-war and you may as well be debating the color of the sky. It's hopeless. Not only that, I see signs that there is really not a consensus about how we should proceed from here. We face an intensely complicated problem that is going to require significant patience and fortitude to resolve, with absolutely no consensus about how to go about it.

We have one group that just wants out. That being the Nader, Moore group. Then we have the Micky Kaus group that apparently wants to take a break for four years or so. Then there are the hawks like myself and blaster who want to get on with it. Apparently, there is another group of Conservatives who are turning on Bush, as we see from blaster's NRO postings, and then we have Kerry/Edwards group, and who knows what they believe. And this list is far from exhaustive. Many people who I know and respect are utterly confused about what is going on, and what we are doing.

Part of the fault lies with Bush, and part of it lies with the media, and a large part of it lies with ourselves.

Bush and company are guilty of not having consensus within the Administration. It honestly drives me nuts to hear the various messages coming out of this White House. I can understand and see the problems with laying the wood to the Saudi government, but why are we pussyfooting around with the Iranian and Syrian governments. Blaster keeps talking about the coming masterstroke, but the hour is getting very late. What little consensus remains is breaking down, and we need to get cracking.

The media is guilty of pursuing their own political agenda over all truth or objectivity. I cannot watch CNN or read any local newspaper without becoming enraged at the stories. Worse, the media's treatment of that fat bastard, (I cannot say his name) has been breathtaking. A massive wedge is being driven into the electorate, and the media is the sledgehammer.

And we are all guilty, because we are too lazy to go and get the facts ourselves. We do not demand that out politicians do anything. Apparently we are all going to sit and watch the bus go over the cliff.

I guess the problem is what do we do. What do you do when you are faced with a group that you can no longer dialogue with because your common understandings have become completely unmoored. I have come to feel that I may as well be debating insane people.

When a person feels that way, if he or she is intelectually honest,, they must turn within, and make sure that the problem is not internal to him. I have made that examination. If I am that delusional, it is escaping my ability to see it.

Having made that determination, the next one is a profoundly dangerous step for any intelectually honest person.

Basically, a very significant segment of the population, who knows how many, appears to be acting on bad information and bad reasoning. They are being driven by an intense hatred for a single man. This group will do whatever it takes to ruin this man and obscure any reasonable argument.

Normally one could and should ignore this. Usually this is just a group of nuts. But what if this group of nuts appears to be growing? What if their actions seriously endanger a country, or endanger you. What then should be done?

If you are like I am, your mind recoils from this thought. I have not, nor do I wish to make it. It is anathema to EVERYTHING that I believe in. It goes against everything that I love about the United States and her people. It represents something too frightening to be named.

This is where my thoughts lay. It is not a comforting place, and the thoughts actually terrify me. What if I truly begin to believe this. What if a significant segment of the population begins to believe it. What madness lies over there?

The madness that happens when two ideologies in conflict face each other with the thought that the other represents the ultimate in evil.

So the question is, are we heading down that path, how far down it have we gone, and how do we change it?

Or then again, I may be full of shit.