That statement should be obvious from a study of history. Being passive and waiting for your opponent to strike in the hope that you may prevent or blunt his attack is a recipe for defeat. When you are faced with as monstrous an enemy as Islamofascism you need to adopt a two pronged strategy – defensive/offensive. Defense is something such as the security fence that Israel has introduced that has made suicide bombing just about disappear from Israel, combined with profiling at airports (see El AL’s polices). Offense involves going after them by assassinations (see Dubai and targeted assassinations in Gaza), attacking their camps (see the drone attacks in Pakistan’s border regions) and military operations where you are not afraid to hit them in their mosques and will not be deterred by their hideous use of human shield. They must never have a restful nights sleep. Obviously to adopt an offensive strategy you need the will to carry it through to the conclusion which means that the New York Times, the BBC, CNN will not deter you and you probably should keep a tight rein on the press when your military and special forces go into the field. Most importantly, you need a commitment to total victory and that starts by defining who your enemy is. Just sitting around waiting for your enemy to attack and hoping that he will make a mistake or that you can soften or deflect the blow is a Maginot Line mentality as it leaves the initiative with your opponent. As Napoleon once said “The side that sits inside its fortifications is beaten”.
by Adam Brodsky
Doubling-down on defense isn’t going to win the War on Terror. Yesterday’s scare in Times Square shows just how hopeless that strategy is — if a cooler can be a threat, not even the NYPD will be able to stop them all.
Yet the uptick in home-turf terror plots — with last Saturday’s bomb attempt just the latest — has many screaming for us to fund an infinite range of new security steps.
Faisal Shahzad hadn’t even been charged before the rear-mirror scrutiny began. How did he slip past security and board a flight to Dubai before finally being nabbed, just minutes before take-off? How did he get US citizenship?
After truck bombs at the World Trade Center in ’93 and in Oklahoma City (not to mention the airstrikes on 9/11), how can someone so easily drive into Manhattan and park a smoking car bomb smack in the heart of Times Square?
Fair questions, all. Answering them, and bolstering security accordingly, is a must — but not enough. As long as suicidal terrorists walk the planet, nothing can guarantee safety.
Have we forgotten our post-9/11 vow — to eradicate the cancer at its root?
[…]
Read the rest here: Defense Won’t Win
On a related note, Rich Lowry calls out the pathetic politicos who won’t call a conspiracy, a conspiracy.
Sometimes a conspiracy is a conspiracy.
If it’s the first step toward madness to see connections between random events when there are none, what is it to pretend that undeniable connections don’t exist?
After the failed Times Square car bombing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano immediately opined that it was a “one-off.” Sen. Chuck Schumer chimed in, “The odds are quite high that this was a lone wolf.” Translation: Nothing to see here, just a random crazy and a failed plot of no larger consequence.
Soon enough, Faisal Shahzad, a 30- year-old US citizen, had been arrested en route to Pakistan. The criminal complaint against him alleges that he “received bomb-making training in the militant strongholds of western Pakistan.”
[…]
The lone-wolf theory holds a certain comfort. It means an attack wasn’t an act of war, but a crime; it means Islam can be put aside as a motivation. Even better, it leaves open the possibility that a right-wing extremist is responsible.
[…]
It’s not that President Obama is unwilling to fight. He’s raining Hellfire on extremists in western Pakistan. But the War on Terror is a bit of an embarrassment and inconvenience to the administration and its supporters. It has the retrograde feel of George W. Bush and is a distraction from the domestic agenda in which they are most invested. They’d rather not be bothered and, psychologically, want to be fighting right-wing nuts rather than Islamists who can’t be blamed on Rush Limbaugh.
[…]
Read the rest: The anti-conspiracy theorists
Tags: Adam Brodsky, Rich Lowry
