Nationalize This Man!
We need Andrew Sullivan to be writing for the White House. His clear thinking on matters of import demands it.
The other strategy is to take 9/11 not as an isolated event but as a stark warning. Defense alone won't work. These groups are guided by a philosophy that is not amenable to suasion or deterrence. And they are aided by a complex network of allies - governments and non-governments - throughout the Middle East that share at least some of the same ideology and a lot of the same methods. Worse, new technology means that these groups could very soon perform their evil with weapons far more powerful than anything we have experienced before. 9/11 is therefore best understood as an early tremor before a real earthquake. So the best defense is offense. We cannot wait for catastrophe to strike again. No one disputes Saddam's malign intentions or brutality. No one seriously doubts he has weapons of mass destruction, and may at some point get nuclear weapons if we don't do more than we have done to stop him. The point of remembering 9/11 is not to prove that Saddam did it; but to remind ourselves that some combination of Saddam and others could do far worse in the future. So what should we do? Wait and hope we can keep this thing under control by a series of defensive actions? Or go on the offensive and do what we can to stop, deter and reverse this threat?
