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Re: Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Two I-told-you-so links: 1) Running off at the Tube, from November 2001; and 2) Terrorist Sting Nets 'Significant" Arms Dealer, from today. Here's the problem with political partisanship, especially in presidential campaigns: Swing voters weigh virtues, plus successes and failures. To paint one's opponent as a complete sham and failure is therefore to risk sacrificing credibiilty with the voters you need most. I'm no fan of the Bush administration, nor of its approach to to terror. It continues to ignore terrorism's causes in conditions the U.S. has caused or exacerbated, and has done too little to relieve. And it has rationalized or failed to take full account of the systematic inter-bureaucratic intelligence failings that allowed 9/11 to happen. That said, I also believe that the country's air travel security system is far better than it was before 9/11, and that international cooperation around operations like this recent sting are also better. Would they also have been better in a Gore administration, post-9/11? Certainly. Still, I think the Bush administration needs to receive some credit where due. Because the voters will give it, even if Bush's opponents don't.
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