Torture lover Marc Thiessen is interpreting Obama's remarks on another potential terrorist attack exactly as expected:
During an interview with Woodward in July, President Obama said: “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever … we absorbed it and we are stronger.”
These are stunningly complacent words from the man responsible for stopping such a terrorist attack. Obama uttered them last July, after America suffered two near misses—the failed attacks on Christmas Day and in Times Square. Rather than serving as a wake-up call and giving the president a sense of urgency, these attacks seem to have given the president a sense of resignation. He is effectively saying: an attack is inevitable, we'll do our best to prevent it, but if we get hit again—even on the scale of 9/11—it's really no big deal.
Thiessen is in the category of Republicans who would apparently prefer Americans not show resilience and bravery in the face of another terrorist attack. Of course, it was only a few weeks ago that Thiessen was arguing that the administration, by saying another attack on the scale of 9/11 was unlikely, was also being complacent.
We are less than a year away from the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As that milestone approaches, a dangerous view is taking hold in Washington that al-Qaeda no longer has the intent or capability to repeat the devastation of that terrible day. In February, Vice President Joe Biden announced that "the idea of there being a massive attack in the United States like 9/11 is unlikely, in my view" and that we need only worry about "small bore" attacks.
On Friday, the former heads of the 9/11 Commission echoed Biden's assertions, declaring that after Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence community wrongly believed that al-Qaeda was intent on "matching or besting the loss of life and destruction it caused that day." Really? They must have forgotten how al-Qaeda planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 -- with a plot, nearly consummated, to blow up seven transatlantic flights departing London's Heathrow Airport for New York, Washington, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto and San Francisco.
So if the administration says it's probably not going to happen, Thiessen thinks they're being dangerously complacent. If they say another attack may happen despite them doing "everything we can to prevent it," but America will nonetheless survive and be stronger for it, Thiessen thinks they're being dangerously complacent. It's almost as if it doesn't really matter what the administration says or does; the only way Thiessen would be happy is if Obama went on Fox News and personally waterboarded a thousand kittens named Mohammed.
