Editorial: Keep the change, Mr. President

Posted

Issue of September 11, 2009 / 22 Elul 5769

A lot has happened in the eight years since Sept. 11, 2001. Children too young to remember much about that day entered high school this week. Two wars were launched and are still being fought, one highly controversial presidency ended and a new, equally controversial one began, and the premature deaths of rescue and recovery workers who spent weeks or months on the smoking rubble in Lower Manhattan seemingly continue to add up.

A lot also has not happened in these eight years. Very little progress has been made toward rebuilding the World Trade Center, for one, which is utterly shameful. We have gone eight years without another attack on US soil, for another; something for which we should be grateful. This fact flies in the face of all predictions and, seemingly, all likelihood, and vindicates the tough-minded approach taken by former President George W. Bush from the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks until he left office this year.

It is worthwhile and important to not go out of our way to make new enemies, and even to reach out to people on the fence; suggestions to the contrary seem foolish. But the first and most important task remains to not give those who hate America an opportunity to strike again. No measure of diplomacy or making nice or fawning over Islam or our Islamic enemies in particular, will ever change the worldview of those who pose the greatest danger and they should be treated accordingly. A seeming lack of understanding of this important point was our strongly voiced concern about President Barack Obama’s worldview before he took office and it remains our deeply held concern now.

It is true that the President has quietly adopted and extended a number of his predecessor’s national security policies. But his unseemly, toadyish comments about Islam and its place in the world, his callous decision to publicly lean on Israel for concessions to its enemies while giving Hamas and Fatah virtually a free pass, and most of all, his ill-advised policy of diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, have brought to the fore a worrisome tendency toward pandering that the President’s critics predicted would appear.

Nine months into his term President Obama is no closer to confronting the specter of a nuclear Iran than he was on Jan. 20, but Iran has had nine more months to perhaps develop a weapon with which to attack Israel.

This week, Iran’s illegitimate leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited the U.S. and five other world powers to Tehran for talks, but said discussions about Iran’s nuclear program are “finished.”

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has pronounced itself at a “stalemate” over Iran’s nuclear program.

In other words, eight years after Sept. 11, 2001, on President Obama’s watch, the world is even less safe than it was before. So far, he can keep the change.