Scott Spiegel

What have we learned in the 10 years since Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?  Several lessons spring to mind:

1. There is nothing President George W. Bush could have done to prevent terrorist acts in his first eight months in office, of which his post-9/11 critics would have approved.  Even after 9/11, liberals have loudly disapproved of profiling at airports, surreptitiously monitoring terrorist communications, and fighting al-Qaeda militarily abroad.  Imagine how they would have reacted if Bush had attempted any of these strategies pre-9/11.

2. Poverty does not cause terrorism; it is both unnecessary and insufficient to the task.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253, was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker.  American Taliban John Walker Lindh went to high school at a “California Distinguished School” in SoCal.  In contrast, poor people the world over—rice farmers in China, untouchables in India—do not rise up en masse to wreak havoc in suicide bombings.  Modern-day terrorism is caused by individuals’ adherence to an ideology that encourages terrorist acts against innocent civilians—an ideology that usually happens to be Islamist.  Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all modern-day terrorists are Muslims.

3. Liberals have amassed a formidable glossary of imprecations they invoke whenever commentators scrutinize the radical nature of Islam: alienating Muslims, being at war with Islam, being Islamophobic, demonizing the other, engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, hijacking a peaceful religion, singling out people because of their religion.  None of these terms is objective enough to mean anything.

4. The criticism that the U.S. shouldn’t be vocal in our support of Israel is specious.  In supporting Israel, our anti-terror stance gains consistency and moral credence to reformists in hostile regimes who are potentially open to our ideas.  Israel is also the U.S.’s front line in the war on terror, and, if supported, may have the guts to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if we don’t get around to doing it.

5. Announcing that we are at war with Islam does not constitute recruitment propaganda for the enemy.  Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House, declared, “I don’t want [al-Qaeda] to be able to stand up and claim… ‘America is at war with Islam.’  That’s one of their main recruiting arguments.”  Actually, one of al-Qaeda’s main recruiting arguments is, “The infidel is wicked, and his weakness and inability to stand up to us prove that our cause is just.”  An argument that would hurt recruiting would be, “America is at war with Islam, and you are going to get blown to smithereens if you fight for us.”

6. Waterboarding isn’t torture—it’s a resistance training technique routinely carried out on U.S. special operations forces, and leaves no permanent physical or psychological damage.  Waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques have been spectacularly successful in uncovering imminent terrorist plots and killing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

7. Troop surges are a winning strategy, as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Libya.  As John McCain noted in his support for the second Afghanistan surge, half-measures in war “lead to failure over time and an erosion of American public support.”  We should never again fail to send an adequate number of troops to get the job done, as soon as they are needed.

8. Bush had to withhold from the public reams of documents about chilling terrorist threats we faced; when newly sworn-in President Obama was briefed on this intelligence, he suddenly did an about-face on almost every campaign promise he had made to reverse his predecessor’s policies.  In just his first 100 days in office, Obama implemented a surge in Afghanistan (followed by a larger surge later that year), asked Congress for $83 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan without funding benchmarks, stepped up Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan, supported renewal of the Patriot Act, invoked the state secrets doctrine, reversed his opposition to rendition, rejected Democrats’ call for a Truth Commission, filed a brief claiming the U.S. can indefinitely hold anyone who supports Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, supported denial of habeas corpus to Bagram prisoners, revived military tribunals at Gitmo, opposed release of Abu Ghraib photos, and failed to do anything to close Gitmo.  It seems as though Commander-in-Chief Bush knew better than Alinskyite community organizer Obama did after all.

9. War is less expensive than Democrats’ wasteful domestic social programs.  Eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the 2003 invasion—cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless stimulus bill ($787 billion).  U.S. involvement in the Libyan conflict cost the same ($1 billion) as the first 48 hours of Obama’s failed Cash-for-Clunkers program.  Defense spending constitutes 20% of the federal budget, and foreign aid just 1%, whereas entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up 43%.

10. Liberals have learned absolutely nothing since 9/11, except that Islam is much more peaceful, tolerant, and pro-U.S. than they’d ever dreamed; KSM should be tried in the same court as people who eat trans fats while drinking Four Loko and smoking in bars; and Muslims were the real victims of 9/11.

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George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points is a surprisingly good read—not that I expected it to be terrible, as Bush-haters probably do.  (I rate his presidency middling, better than his father’s, and better than any Democrat’s since at least JFK’s.)

Given the sharp turn our nation has taken leftward—and downward—the memoir made me feel ridiculously nostalgic.

The chapter titles are short, punchy, to-the-point.  You can practically hear W reciting them into his mini-tape recorder: “Quitting.”  “Running.”  “Personnel.”  “Stem Cells.”

That would be “Quitting” as in drinking, and “Running” for political offices including governor of Texas and the presidency.  “Personnel” relates Bush’s decision-making process for nominating and/or firing staffers Dick Cheney, James Baker and Ted Olson (lawyers in Bush v. Gore), Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Bob Gates, Andrew Card, John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito.

Not surprisingly, the longest chapter is “Iraq,” which outlines Bush’s decision to invade the country and take out Saddam Hussein.  Bush lays out the case for his decision to attack clearly, logically, and unimpeachably, including the overwhelming global consensus that Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction.  Bush chronicles the support he received from steadfast allies Tony Blair, John Howard, and José Maria Avnar, and the backstabbing he encountered from treacherous weasels Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac, and Vladimir Putin.

The facts Bush provides on the lead-up to the Iraq War remind us that claims he “rushed to war,” “went it alone,” and had no plans for postwar Iraq are the fevered delusions of leftist lunatics.  (Just reading about the U.S.’s efforts to rope Security Council members into approving UN resolutions to deal with Hussein “diplomatically,” I grew six inches of facial hair.)

“Leading” describes Bush’s leadership on a variety of issues, including No Child Left Behind and the regrettable Medicare prescription drug benefit, as well as his heartbreaking second-term failure to pass Social Security reform and his (mostly solid) immigration reform.

Three chapters are stinkers; fortunately, they come near the end.  “Lazarus Effect” brags how generous Bush was with taxpayer money in starting an AIDS prevention program in Africa that constituted a drop in the bucket because it did nothing to address the corruption in Africa’s tyrannical regimes.  (Bizarre revelation: Upon landing in Tanzania, Bush writes, “[A] cluster of women danced to the festive beat of drums and horns.  As one rotated to the music, I saw my photo stretched across her backside.”)

“Freedom Agenda” boasts about Bush’s push for a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution over the objections of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell, and his support for free elections for Palestinians who ended up voting Hamas into power.  “Financial Crisis” justifies Bush’s backing of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and automobile industry bailout.  It’s not surprising that the “moderate,” “bipartisan” activity outlined in these three chapters was concentrated in Bush’s final two years, after the disastrous political events of 2005 (including the outcry over his response to Hurricane Katrina).

In the introduction, Bush explains that the book is structured thematically: rather than a straightforward chronological narrative, each chapter covers a choice point in his life.  The result can feel a bit postmodern at times.  For example, we make it through one chapter that ends with his decision to run for president, then are plopped back into his pre-governorship days.

Still, I applaud Bush’s decision to structure the book this way, because it emphasizes something important about the life of a political leader: namely, the importance of free will and personal responsibility.  Bush describes his thought process as he faced each momentous decision, and while he admits he didn’t always make the best decision, he insists he was the one who made the decisions, takes full responsibility for them, and learns from his mistakes.

Contrast the active title of Bush’s memoir with the passive title of Barack Obama’s premature first memoir, Dreams from My Father, which emphasizes the hereditary, environmental forces that swept Obama’s worldview into the twisted, collectivist wilderness it inhabits today.

Or contrast Bush’s willingness to take responsibility for his mistakes—and graceful post-presidency silence on Obama’s calamitous first two years—with Obama’s constant badmouthing of Bush and blaming him for everything bad in his administration.  As Rush Limbaugh noted last week in his interview with the former president, Bush didn’t spend eight years blaming President Bill Clinton for faulty, impotent foreign policy and failed efforts to prevent the spread of Islamic terrorist networks that attacked the West after 9/11.

Bush enjoys a certain satisfying revenge on his critics by laying out the facts and circumstances behind each decision and forcing them to judge whether they would have done differently.

The crucial passage from the excellent “Surge” chapter—and maybe from the whole book—is this: “Years from now, historians may look back and see the surge as a foregone conclusion, an inevitable bridge between the years of violence that followed liberation and the democracy that emerged.  Nothing about the surge felt inevitable at the time.  Public opinion ran strongly against it.  Congress tried to block it.  The enemy fought relentlessly to break our will.”  Beneficial outcomes aren’t inevitable or immediate, Bush reminds us—they are the hard-won product of courage displayed at crucial decision points.

One thing supporters and detractors agree on is that Bush’s unpopularity by the end of his second term was the result of choices he had made.  His unpopularity was not proof he had made good choices, but it was evidence he had made tough ones.



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In anticipation of President Barack Obama’s primetime address to the nation last night on the Iraq War, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote, “Now that the Iraq War is over… only one thing is clear about the outcome: We didn’t win.”

Actually, I can think of about 12 things that are clearer about the outcome of the Iraq War than the conclusion that we didn’t win: (1) Obama was wrong about the surge, (2) Vice President Joe Biden was wrong about the surge, (3) President George W. Bush was right to ignore Congressional Democrats and the Iraq Study Group and order the surge in 2007, (4) insurgent violence dropped precipitously after the surge was implemented, (5) if Democrats had had their way on the surge in Iraq, per Harry Reid’s declaration that “this war is lost,” it would have been lost, (6) Biden was wrong about dividing Iraq into ethnic partitions, (7) Biden is a loon for claiming that the Iraq War could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration, (8) Iraq is now the fourth-most politically free Middle Eastern country, after democracy Israel, republic Lebanon, and constitutional monarchy Morocco, (9) General David Petraeus’ Iraq surge set the model for beating back insurgents and winning in Afghanistan, (10) despite liberals’ bleating about its expense, eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the March 2003 invasion—now turn out to have cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless trillion-dollar stimulus bill, (11) Bush’s popularity didn’t sink to the level that Obama’s is at now until late 2005, two-and-a-half years into the Iraq War and well into Bush’s second term, and (12) Obama’s address last night was full of bromides, revisionist history, and platitudinous prescriptions for the future that have little relation to what will actually need to be done in the War on Terror according to a fair evaluation of conditions on the ground.

But then I’m not Eugene Robinson, who recently called those who wanted an investigation into Park51 mosque supporter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s radical ties “loudmouths,” “fraidy-cats,” and “professional victims,” dismissed Tea Partiers as racists, and called Dr. Alveeda King a “puppet” for appearing at Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor rally.

Oh, and: (13) if anyone deserves to give a triumphal speech marking the end of combat operations in Iraq, it is Bush, Petraeus, Vice President Dick Cheney, or Kermit the Frog—anyone but Obama, who opposed the war from the start and voted as U.S. senator to defund it.

And: (14) Obama has learned nothing about the danger of prematurely promising to remove our troops by a certain date and the fortifying effect this has on our enemy, as demonstrated by his declaration in his speech that we will begin removing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 according to his preordained schedule, and by his standing commitment to remove all 50,000 troops still stationed in Iraq by the end of 2011.

Not to mention: (15) the most factual elements of Obama’s address could have been cribbed from a Bush speech on Iraq from five years ago, such as “We must never lose sight of what’s at stake.  As we speak, al Qaeda continues to plot against us,” and (16) Obama wasn’t honorable or honest enough to give Bush credit for the surge, saying only that “[N]o one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security,” which is about as controversial to his antiwar base as saying, “No one could doubt President Bush’s support for his family, or his love of his wife and children.”

Robinson’s liberal fantasy proclaims, “The war was on its way toward becoming a disastrous failure until the country’s Sunni minority turned against the al-Qaeda jihadists who had flooded into Iraq to fight against the hated Americans,” then adds, as an afterthought, “and Bush’s troop surge, ably led by Gen. David Petraeus, capitalized on this shift of allegiance.”  Yes, sectarian conflict facilitated conditions in which the surge could flourish, but: (17) Bush and Petraeus were savvy enough to recognize this shift in conditions on the ground, prepare a successful strategy to take advantage of it, execute this strategy despite the histrionics of Congressional Democrats, and persist until it yielded its intended results.

Give Obama credit for this: his Iraq speech was the best speech he has ever given from the Oval Office.  Of course, the only other Oval Office speech he’s given was on the BP oil spill, an address that even liberal supporters at MSNBC and The New York Times panned as amateurish and ineffective.

Bonus fact!: The Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index reports that 79% of Iraqis believe that conditions in their country will be the same as or better in 2010 than in 2009—more than you can say for residents of the United States.



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The speaker was Nancy Pelosi.  The date was January 17, 2006.  The setting was a town hall meeting in San Francisco, captured on video and available at Breitbart TV.  The subject was the Iraq War.  The surgery was Botox.

The authors are Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.  The date is August 10, 2009.  The setting is an editorial in USA Today.  The subject is protestors at health care townhall meetings.  The surgery is still Botox.

Pelosi passionately spoke of free speech rights and the necessity of hearing all viewpoints: “I say to the President, ‘Mr. President [Bush], if you think that our troops in Iraq are there to fight for democracy, do not destroy it at home by cutting off our freedom of speech.’”

She highlighted the critical, historical role of townhall meetings and the importance of face-to-face confrontations between congressmen and the voters they represent: “Democrats and Republicans… are starting to speak out [about the war].  And you know why?  Because they’re hearing from home.  There’s nothing more articulate, more eloquent to a member of Congress than the voice of his or her own constituent.”

Most importantly, she reminded listeners of the strengths of our uniquely American system of representative democracy, and advised them that there is no higher patriotic calling than standing up for what you believe in: “So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view, all of it—your advocacy is very American and very important…  So let’s not question each other’s patriotism when we have this very honest debate that our country expects and deserves.”

Her words were reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s defense of criticizing the Iraq War and the administration more generally: “Since when has it been part of American patriotism to keep our mouths shut and not raise questions about what our government is doing? That has always been the tradition of America.”  And who can forget: “I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic.  We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”

Pelosi and Hoyer characterize health care townhall protests as “un-American” attacks.  They portray the protestors as enemies, not just of reform, but of our very way of life: “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid… of differing views…  Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”

In a related development, the Obama administration asks Americans to send the White House any “fishy” comments or criticisms they hear about the health care bill, and the e-mail addresses of those who send them this information.

When anti-war protestors in the back of the San Francisco auditorium held up signs and loudly chanted, “No more funding the war!” thus drowning out Nancy Pelosi, she gamely replied, “I appreciate that you, as advocates, can say that.  I appreciate that!”  The chair of the event intervened on her behalf and pleaded, “Ladies and gentlemen, please, let’s not dissolve into a shouting match here,” but Pelosi cried, “That’s OK!  That’s OK!”

Later, while in the middle of a sentence, Pelosi noticed a row of Code Pink protestors standing up and holding signs across the front of the stage.  Pelosi jokingly called out, “Hello!”  The chair, getting into the spirit of the thing, jovially observed, “This is the way we know we’re in San Francisco.”  Pelosi laughed heartily and exclaimed, “And we love it!”  The Code Pink protestors beamed.

Soon afterward, a woman in the audience began screaming about some conspiracy theory involving “bulldozing people’s homes.”  Pelosi politely interjected, “Excuse me…” but the woman continued to yell while standing and waving a stack of papers.  While audience members hollered, “Shut up!” Pelosi soothingly reassured the woman, “I understand your anger,” and murmured “Yes… Yes…” as the woman rattled off her points.

Pelosi and Hoyer excoriate health care townhall protestors for their disorderly behavior: “[Their] tactics have included… shout[ing] ‘Just say no!’ [and] drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.”

Pelosi inspiringly ended her address, “Let me close with this on the Democrats and how we see ourselves…  When Franklin Roosevelt died—and I draw great inspiration from him, because he was a disruptor.”  She added, “I’m a fan of disruptors,” and pumped her fists up and down as though agitating a crowd.

Pelosi and Hoyer somberly write, “[I]t is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway… to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue.”

Well, that’s clear, then.