Rosa Brooks's Dirty-Harry Doctrine: Al Qaeda 'Got Lucky' on 9/11

July 20th, 2007 7:13 AM

Feelin' lucky, punk?

The 9-10 mentality is alive and well and living at the Los Angeles Times. In A really bad case of 'reality', house columnist Rosa Brooks approvingly cites unnamed "experts" thusly:

[Al Qaeda] was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky — but despite the unexpected success of their attack on the U.S., they did not pose an imminent mortal threat to the nation.

Brooks offers up that analysis in service of her theory that by invading Iraq we have strengthened al Qaeda and transformed it into the threat it hadn't been. Has Brooks forgotten that al Qaeda also "got lucky" everywhere from the U.S. embassy attacks in Africa to the USS Cole to the Khobar towers?

The Dem presidential contenders might want to consider adopting what we might call Rosa Brooks' "Dirty Harry Doctrine." What other terrorist threats are the Dems willing to write off?

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net