Tag Archives: War on Terror
Al Qaeda on the Run
After retreating from Iraq, Afghanistan, and US embassies around the Muslim world, the president called in the marines – as background props for a Camp Pendleton speech – to announce that the “United States is never going to retreat from the world”. “We don’t get terrorized,” he said.
He also repeated his claim that “the core of Al Qaeda is on the way to defeat”.
Or as the late Osama bin Laden put it, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse they like the strong horse”.
9/11 Defendants
Five 9/11 bad guys, including Sheik Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were arraigned in a military court at Gitmo over the weekend. One of the defense attorneys wore an abaya and requested that women on the prosecution side do likewise to help her clients might avoid the occasion of sin. Another defense lawyer asked that his clients not be subject to strip search before entering the courtroom. The judge is thinking it over. As for the clients themselves? They prayed, refused to speak, and passed around a copy of The Economist magazine.
9/11
New York Mayor Bloomberg says there’s no room for New York firemen or clergy at the tomorrow’s ground zero memorial. Mark Steyn finds that odd since there was plenty of room for them on 9/11/2001. He thinks we’ve lost focus on the actual events.
“What of the 23rd Psalm? It was recited by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer and the telephone operator Lisa Jefferson in the final moments of his life before he cried “Let’s roll!” and rushed the hijackers.”
“9/11 was both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid rolled into one, and the fourth flight was the only good news of the day, when citizen volunteers formed themselves into an ad hoc militia and denied Osama bin Laden what might have been his most spectacular victory. A few brave individuals figured out what was going on and pushed back within half-an-hour.”
This was my 9/12/2001 cartoon.
The September 12 front page editorial, “We are all Americans”, in Le Monde exemplified the unity of Americans and our allies in those days, though it was short lived.
(Click the image for New York Magazine’s excellent “Let’s Roll” – 9/11Encyclopedia)
The WSJ thinks the war against Islamic Terror is successful, so far, and that we’re more united than we think. The paper credits President Obama for putting his stamp on most of the Bush war policies, in much the same way Eisenhower successfully embraced Truman’s cold war policies.
Federal Power
A federal judge ruled that the federal government doesn’t have the power to make you go out and buy something you otherwise wouldn’t – health care in this case. The government claims its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce gives it the right to do just that.
Nat Hentoff doesn’t think any clause of the constitution gives the government the right to assassinate its own citizens who become jihadists.
Dots
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, better known as the underpants bomber, claimed there are twenty others like him in Yemen boning up on how to take down airliners. Despite the smoking gun, his lawyer entered a not guilty plea and clammed him up.
