Hindsight isn't 20/20, at least when the subject is 9/11. Seven years after the Osama bin Laden-orchestrated attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, majorities of respondents in just nine of nineteen countries surveyed believe al Qaeda behind the 9/11 murders. Did they miss bin Laden's tape claiming credit for the attacks? A third of our neighbors to the south blame al Qaeda, and almost a third blame the United States. Nearly a quarter of Germans think al Qaeda responsible for the attacks. Nearly half of Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, sees Israel behind the attacks. Only Kenya and Nigeria, perhaps immune to hoaxes because of the plethora of internet scams emanating from their environs, boast supermajorities believing al Qaeda responsible for 9/11.

So much for much vaunted education levels abroad.

Kenya has the advantage of seeing al Qaeda work up close in the US Embassy bombings of 1998.

I think the American left is partially to thank for the beliefs about 9/11. Even if they don't believe all the conspiricy theories they've gone to great effort to trash the president and the republicans both at home and abroad. While maybe not directly endorsing the nutjob theories they've manage to convince many that an inside job was at least a very real possibility.

Before and including 9/11/01 – multiple terrorist attacks. Post 9/11 – zero terrorist attacks.

People can think and say what they want, but our current President and administration has done a pretty good job of keeping the wolves at bay.

This sums it up nicely...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/would_obama_have_given_up_afte.html

and these bums want BO to win.

ASDF,

Giving the Bush Administration's post-911 policies credit for the absence of any terrorist attacks on the American homeland is like crediting Clinton's tax increases for spurring the internet revolution in the mid to late 1990s.

Of course, President Bush's policies have lead to the deaths of thousands of soldiers in Iraq, and even more dead Iraqis, and there is no reason to think this has made us safer at all. If you want to reduce it down to a simple cost-benefit perspective you would need to prove that more than 4000 Americans would've died in terrorist attacks if we had not invaded Iraq. No one entertains such a silly idea; by all accounts the Iraq war was a monstrous war crime and those in this Administration should be prosecuted after they leave office.

by all accounts the Iraq war was a monstrous war crime and those in this Administration should be prosecuted after they leave office.

'Accounts' refers to reportage, Eric, not a normative statement. Can you define 'war crime'?

The invasion of Iraq was a war crime. Iraq didn't attack us; we attacked them -- that makes it a war crime.

Giving the Bush Administration's post-911 policies credit for the absence of any terrorist attacks on the American homeland is like crediting Clinton's tax increases for spurring the internet revolution in the mid to late 1990s.

Bad an@logy. Lack of terrorist attacks are Bush policies' intended consequences. Hence there is sense in connecting the two. Clinton's tax raise was not intended to spur the internet revolution. No reason to connect the two random items.

I guess I’m just not bright enough to understand that an@logy. But if I were, I might say that the divide in terms of guts and importance between the two events couldn’t be wider.

You can think and say what you want about Bush’s decision to take the war to the enemy, but he made a serious executive decision with the best information he had available to him with the support of a majority of Congress and at the time the American people knowing that there would be zero political, and likely, historical gain.

And I don't think you can argue with the facts in terms of our relative safety. You may not agree that that has anything to do with our foray into Afghanistan or Iraq but I think you might be wrong.

Like it or not, Bush has b@lls. Clinton? Seriously.

Having "balls" is not in and of itself a virtue. And when those balls are really a mask for hubris, it can be a serious, serious vice.

Hence, Bush had no problem violating the Constitution in attacking, overturning, and occupying a sovereign nation without a Congressional Declaration of War. And he and others think the untold thousands dead and wounded are a-okay as long as we understand that it is merely "collateral" damage. B.S.

Now, Bush seems determined to one-up himself when it comes for respecting the borders and sovereignty of other nations. If reports are accurate -- and I suspect the Bush Administration was deliberate in the leaks - our Special Forces are now engaging in cross-border battles into Pakistan, though ostensibly an ally. This is an act of war. Why is it that other nations have to observe international rules of war, but we do not?

I will credit Bush - to an extent - from thwarting any terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11. But thousands have still taken place around the globe. And many reports suggest that Al Qaeda is more powerful than ever in terms of recruits. So I'll give him a degree of credit here. But I'll also blame him for shredding what's left of our Constitution and civil liberties, for over 4,000 American military personal dead and thousands more maimed, for untold "collateral" damage inflicted on sovereign peoples, for causing the mass exodus and persecution of Iraqi Christians, hithertofore largely unmolested and free, and for the blowback that will surely be coming to us as we have given millions of Muslims all the more reason to hate us and to radicalize.

Iraqi Christians have never been "unmolested or free". We just never heard of them being mistreated because a sovereign nation that needed to be overthrown, and thankfully was, was squelching any information about them.

As for cross border incursions... Sometimes military necessity dictates what needs to be done to be successful. If President Bush approved it then he definitely had numerous military commanders suggest and recommend it. And it has been successful in killing those people that need some some killing. Which I like!

"The invasion of Iraq was a war crime. Iraq didn't attack us; we attacked them -- that makes it a war crime."

EW: Severe oversimplfied definition of a war crime, don't you think?

AM,

Not really. Was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a war crime?

Webster,

It's not a bad ana logy. I could make the ana-logy more general and say that Clinton's tax increases were responsible for the 22 million new jobs created during his Administration, but would this be legitimate? Both are facts: Clinton raised marginal tax rates and during his Administration 22 million new jobs were created, but can we say the former is the cause of the latter?

Besides, I don't think Bush's post-911 policies have been designed to prevent or minimize terrorism. Like the WMD fabrication, it's just a convenient sales pitch for war.