9/11 In the Here and Now

The original idea for my column this weekend was a retrospective on 9/11 -- along the lines of what we've been doing at NRO for the past few days, and what other publications have similarly been doing in connection with the 10th anniversary. (I still find it hard to refer to the annual remembrance of a history-altering atrocity as an "anniversary" -- maybe Jay will give me something more suitable.)

I abandoned that idea not because it was a bad one. Many of the retrospectives have been great -- Rich's on 9/11 heroes and Michael Ledeen's on his heroic family were especially moving, and Mark's column this morning is a brilliant reflection on how we've allowed suicidal self-loathing to hijack righteous resolve. As for lessons learned, VDH admirably covered how they are so convincing that even President Obama had to adopt most of them ... after campaigning against President Bush's application of them.

So I decided, instead, that it would be better to address a clear and present danger: the ongoing effort to undermine pro-active, intelligence-based counterterrorism -- the kind of counterterrorism pioneered by the NYPD under Commissioner Ray Kelly.

A decade hence, I'd like to think we'll be commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11, not the 8th or 9th anniversary of something just as horrific, or worse. The only way that happens is if we persevere with what works -- if we not only learn the lessons of 9/11 but keep applying them, as NYPD does but as the Obama administration would like to stop it (and other police forces) from doing. One of those lessons, I try to explain, is that Islamist ideology is a political program, not a religion. We must stop being paralyzed by false accusations of religious bigotry.

For more, my friend Judy Miller has a terrific op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today on how the NYPD has exploited intelligence to foil some 13 plots since September 11, 2001. And while you're at the WSJ, check out James Taranto's splendid weekend interview with former attorney general Michael Mukasey, who looks back on 20 years of American responses to jihadist terror -- including presiding as a judge over some little trial back in the mid-nineties ...