EDINBURGH--In the wake of today's news about the new airliner plot foiled (am I glad I'm not at Heathrow today!), and of the reactions to Joe Lieberman's defeat on Tuesday, a couple of thoughts from this corner.
On terrorism itself: every time the Bush administration has patted itself on the back about how splendidly our Iraqi adventure was succeeding in preventing more terrorism on our shores, all I could think of was the length of quiet time following the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Was that Clinton's doing? Were Republicans applauding him for the length of time since a terrorist attack on our shores back then?
On the definition of the struggle: the Republicans have their talking points straight--the Democrats are the Defeatocrats. This from The Note:
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Michael Barone writes that the Connecticut primary reveals that the "center of gravity" in the Democratic Party has moved, from the "lunch-bucket working class that was the dominant constituency up through the 1960s to the secular transnational professional class that was the dominant constituency in the 2004 presidential cycle." He also writes that the core constituency of the Democratic Party wants to "stand aside" from the global struggle against "Islamofascist terrorism."
But who are the terrorists? Obviously, rhetoricians like Barone have their Intellectual Dymo already set. But, somebody actually went to some trouble to answer that question. In an NYT op-ed reprinted in last Sunday's London Observer, Dr. Robert Pape offers the first dose of the only cure for the rhetorical: the empirical. One may agree or disagree with his policy suggestions, but what he discovered in trying to answer the question, who are the terrorists?, should be the first step in deciding whether the advocates for a more "muscular" Middle East policy should finally be replaced by the advocates of a more brainy one.
PS: Somebody please ask Michael Barone what happened to the lunch-bucket working class anyway. Last time I looked, they were in China.