6 years of safety

I've certainly had a lot to criticize* with President Bush's job performance over the first 6 1/2 years - his refusal to even attempt to rein in runaway government spending, his disinterest in pushing for entitlement (particularly social security) reform, and much of the strategic execution on the Iraq front between the removal of Saddam and the beginning of the surge.

But on this most sacred of days, I feel compelled to point out that he has gotten the most important thing right, and I mean spectacularly right. Recall the mood on and in the days/weeks/months following 9/11. Go back and read some contemporary opinion pieces or blog posts if your memory needs jogging. The one thing about which there was unanimity, from left and right, hawk and dove, Republican and Democrat, Hatfield and McCoy, is that there would be more (successful) terrorist attacks on US soil. Maybe immediately, maybe not for a few weeks or months, but as sure as death and taxes they were coming. And likely to be bad.

Well, 2191 days later and it still has not happened, despite the obsessive desire of al Qaeda and other global terrorist organizations to hit us again. There can be no denying that our anti-terror policies, combined with our aggressive prosecution of the multi-front and asymmetric war on Islamic Fascism, have worked better than we could possibly imagined. And this despite a determined movement of anti-American useful idiots at home (mostly) unwittingly attempting to undermine and obstruct those efforts.

Yes, for this, by far the most important task at hand, George W. Bush has been a rousing success. It's a remarkable accomplishment, and I can't let this day pass without acknowledging it.

* A necessary tangent, while I'm on the subject - if one cannot find a bunch of things to like and a bunch of things to dislike about each and every president's performance in office, he is either incapable of, or unwilling to practice, critical thinking and should thus be ignored.

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I also can't let this day pass without pointing to Popular Mechanics' thorough debunking of the "theories" of the insane movement that thinks 9/11 was some kind of US and/or Israeli inside job. These despicable human beings are small in number, but they scream loud enough and will be given enough attention by a sympathetic media near this and every anniversary that they still need to be issued a virtual smackdown on general principle.

UPDATE 9/12/06: A touching 9/11 memorial.