Give President Bush Some Credit

Check out this article called, "The Dog That Has Not Barked."

1,576 days have passed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and still there has been no subsequent terrorist assault on American soil.

Is this just good luck, or is it the result of good policy?

The danger is that the farther 9/11 recedes in memory, the less we appreciate that it hasn’t happened again. When it comes to the war on terror, many Americans have become short-sighted, ungrateful and decadent.

Consider “Munich,” the new Steven Spielberg film. The movie, which last month was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, follows the response to the brutal murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. According to Spielberg’s version of events, Israel commissioned a small team to travel throughout Europe to assassinate the terrorists behind the killings.

Rather than an inspiring story of justice and deterrence, Spielberg’s movie is a depressing tale of retaliation as counterproductive and morally corrupting. In an interview, the director said, “A response to a response doesn’t solve anything.” Instead, you need to sit down and talk things out “until you’re blue in the gills.”

There’s little doubt that Spielberg is referring, not just to Munich 1972 but to America post-9/11. The last shot in the film catches the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background.

Several times in “Munich,” characters point out that, if the Israelis kill a terrorist, many more will rise to replace him, and these successors will be even worse. That may have been true with Nazis during World War II, but what is the alternative? To let the World Court handle the matter? To try to reason till you’re blue in the gills with Black September and al-Qaeda? Spielberg calls his movie a “prayer for peace,” but it is highly likely that calling a halt to the hunt for bin Laden and his henchmen will lead to more bloodshed, not less.

The terrorists’ lack of success is the result of a response that has been aggressive and single-minded -- at home, in Iraq and in places we know little about. The policy is working. It has kept us safe. We tamper with it at our own extreme peril.