Ed Morrissey:
No kidding — and it’s not just the Americans who are starting to realize it. Former ABC reporter and Nightline anchor Ted Koppel told David Gregory on Meet the Press yesterday that the US overreacted to the threat, and that this isn’t the first time, either. “Can you imagine a day, David,” Koppel asks, “when we’ll be without that [TSA] bureaucracy?”
[youtube]http://youtu.be/ZQRrYsea7xQ[/youtube]
“Terrorism is simply the weapon by which the weak engage the strong,” Koppel said. “They cause the strong—in this case us—to overreact. We are the ones who went into Iraq and spent about a trillion and a half dollars doing it, losing 4,500 men and women, god knows how many tens of thousands injured. We are the ones who created a bureaucracy. The TSA has what—57,000 people operating within the TSA? Can you imagine a day when we will ever be without that bureaucracy? All imposed upon ourselves.”
Koppel also notes that the only embassy to remain shuttered is in Sana’a, Yemen — hardly a vote of confidence in our war-on-terror partner there. Shouldn’t the US have worked with the governments of these allies to strengthen security rather than bail out, Koppel wonders, as a show of force instead of a vote of no-confidence?
During the Cold War Ronald Reagan created a flurry of spending from the Soviets that basically caused their empire to become bankrupt.
When it broke up we learned (if we were paying attention) that many ex-SSR’s were merely slave states that were constantly looted for whatever the cabal in Moscow wanted or needed.
Some of those ex-SSR’s are STILL trying to recover both economically as well as environmenally from what the Soviet leadership ordered done in their lands.
Think the Islamists who desire worldwide caliphate and Islam uber alles haven’t paid attention to that lesson of history?
See what Koppel is talking about now from a financial standpoint?
Recall what Saddam did in Kuwait from an environmental standpoint?
Sometimes I think WE in America are the only ones who teach our children phony, revisionist pap instead of the truths of history that contain all the mistakes we need never make.
What? He didn’t just know that this was just one of the “Phony Scandals”?
If the reaction had been minimal and a successful attack had occurred, what would Ed Morrisey be saying?
Koppel is offering a legitimate criticism. Morrisey is only jabbering.
More liberal fear monegering
@DrJohn, #4:
@Greg: And he was correct. If you want to talk about Presidents who lie then your boy 0-blama tops the list.
@Common Sense, #6:
If you want to believe the fantasy that the Bush administration saved America from nuclear attack by invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, it’s unlikely that anyone is ever going to talk you out of it.
I’ll remember it as the administration that failed to connect the dots that led to 9/11—even when they’d been circled by intelligence services with a red pencil—and that was slow on the uptake even as the attack was in progress.
Nor will I be quick to forget that the right portrayed Clinton’s missile attacks on al Qaeda training camps as an effort to distract attention from their Monica Lewinsky investigation.
Ed Morrisey should recall all of that before he yaps about overreactions. Better an overreaction than no reaction at all.