Most terrorists seem like bumbling losers if they're caught before the act: That's certainly true of the Fort Dix jihadists who took their terrorist training DVD to the local audio store to be copied. It was also true of the Islamists arrested in Toronto last year for plotting to behead the prime minister, one of whose cell members had a bride who wanted him to sign a prenup committing him to jihad. The Heathrow plotters arrested while planning to blow up U.S.-bound airliners included a Muslim convert who'd started out as the son of a British Conservative Party official with a P. G. Wodehouse double-barreled name and a sister who was a Victoria's Secret model and ex-wife of tennis champ Yanick Noah.
But then Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 gang would have seemed pretty funny if you'd run into them in that lap-dance club they went to before the big day where the girls remembered them only as very small tippers. Most terrorists are jokes until the bomb goes off.
If we catch anybody other than a top-tier known terrorist before they attack, they look like clowns and losers not worthy of calling our effort against them a "war." How can we take such idiots seriously, they say.
And if we fail to stop terrorists before they strike, our intelligence and law enforcement are inept jokers and we've wasted money on them--with the obvious solution of launching another investigation trotted out.
It's a win-win situation for the side that wants to declare peace and sit at home snarling about the war mongers who insist we are at war with evil men.
And so here we are, our safety stuck in the middle.
