Oh, and on the eve of a national election. Surely a coincidence, eh?
But I can't in good faith complain about the latter since if the charge is true is surely is important to find out before the election in order to make our decisions.
But the charge makes no sense regardless of when it is made.
It should be no shock that our enemies hate us even more when we fight back. I dare say the Nazis were more angry at us in 1943 than in 1941, but by 1945 Nazism couldn't attract a corporal's guard worth of members. Indeed, during the war, Nazism was rather popular in South America even as the region's governments sided with the Allied powers (that's why so many Nazis fled to South America after the war, remember?). Is anybody seriously arguing we shouldn't fight back because enemy anger at us increases? Clearly, we should have called off the war in Europe shortly after D-Day since I rather doubt German public opinion shifted to the pro-Allied side during Cobra.
If our current policy of fighting the enemy overseas is wrong, surely we were all in a kite-flying inter-religious paradise prior to April 2003.
Sadly, that is not the case.
We know that by September 11, 2001, thousands of jihadis had been fired up enough to get some serious terrorist training; and we know that terrorist strikes were launched against us from Beirut to Pennsylvania (United 93) by those terrorists.
And all before we had any troops in Baghdad.
We know that arresting and trying in civilian courts the terrorists didn't ease their anger.
We know that surgical strikes didn't ease jihadi anger.
We know that retreating from Lebanon and Somalia didn't reduce jihadi anger.
We know that intense work on the Palestinian question didn't defuse jihadi anger.
We know that saving Moslems from Christians in the Balkans hasn't reduced jihadi anger at us.
We even know that helping jihadis to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan failed to defuse jihadi anger at us.
And we surely know that Canada and Germany have attracted jihadi anger though they clearly oppose the war in Iraq. Good grief people, France of all countries has angered the jihadis! I mean, how much more cooperative can you get with the whole jihad program than France has been? Rumor has it the newest Peugeot models will have wicks built in leading into the gas tanks of their cars to make torching them easier.
So, let us recap:
--Failure to fight inspired the jihadis.
--Retreating inspired jihadis.
--Protecting Moslems seems to keep the jihadi fires burning just as brightly.
--And even aiding jihadis where our interests coincided inspired the jihadis.
When Papal statements of the bleeding obvious, Rushdie, films, Miss Universe contests, cartoons, random rumors reported by Newsweek, the mere existence of Israel, and educating girls inspire jihadi anger, I would think the proper question is to ask what doesn't set them off?
All we really know is that jihadis will cite whatever reason is currently being promoted by Michael Moore and are happy to skip from reason to reason as long as the conclusion is that infidels must die. They're flexible that way.
Of course, we don't know that the NIE actually says. We just know what the Times has chosen to tell us about selected portions they were told about. Based on past NYT leaks, can we honestly say that this latest disclosure was made to help our war effort? Read here (tip to Powerline) for some good observations of what we weren't told.
(And no, I won't link to any NYT piece. My Times Deselect decision still stands.)
The answer to the latest version of an old charge begins with a decision to release the NIE (properly scrubbed of sources and methods) so we can yet again judge if the CIA leakers and NYT editors really have our best interests at heart and whether their leaked and published truth bears any resemblance to reality.
The reality is, we must hunt our enemies to the ends of the Earth and kill them where we find them, confident that we deserve to win this fight between civilization and barbarians.
Or surrender to them and get it over with. To be fair, except for certain local experiments in surrendering in the suburbs of European cities, we haven't tried the surrender option.
I'd rather we fight and win, however. Win the Long War against the jihadis and those who sponsor them and then tell me about what the opinion polls of Moslems say.
UPDATE: Here is the "Key Judments" section of the NIE. I'm going to have to read it closer, but if it is really complaining that the jihadis are becoming more diffused and decentralized, isn't this really arguing against successfully denying them sanctuaries where they can mass? Isn't this really saying overthrowing the Taliban and scattering al Qaeda was wrong? That's my first impression anyway. And it would fit with past complaints by those who support a law enforcement approach of "scattering" the enemy. But this was a 3-minute scan so I'll revisit this. Or link to others who I am sure are busy going over the summary.
UPDATE SOON AFTER: Here are links to reactions. Protein Wisdom surely has the best title: "The Knights Who Say ... NIE!" Could only be better if written "The NYT Who Says NIE!" But too late for that, I suppose.
ANOTHER UPDATE ON SCATTERING THE ENEMY: Those who are inclined to think that attacking the enemy to deny them sanctuary has only resulted in scattering them around the world might want to consider what Richard Clarke had to say (I can't remember who to hat tip for this one, I'm afraid) about the al Qaeda sanctuary prior to 9/11:
I think the intelligence community, the FBI, were unanimous, certainly throughout the year 2000 into 2001, that there was in fact a very widespread Al Qaeda network around the world in probably between 50-60 countries -- that they had trained thousands, perhaps over 10,000 terrorists at the camps in Afghanistan; that we didn't really know who those people were. We didn't have names for very many of them, and we didn't know where they were; but since bin Laden kept saying the United States was the target, the United States was the enemy, that we had to expect an increasing rate of sophistication of attacks by this large Al Qaeda network against the United States.
They scatter regardless in order to attack us--but now they have no secure sanctuary in which to train.
