How do you measure terror that did not happen?
A Web site called Tech Central Station ran a column Thursday by a guy named James Glassman. He opens with this:
"As I write, 1,576 days have passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and still there has been no subsequent terrorist assault on American soil."
He then goes into a long rumination about how you assess the fact that nothing has happened in the intervening years and why nothing has happened.
The answer, of course, is that a lot has happened.
Terrorists have been chased down. They have been scooped up off the streets of Milan. They have been kept in secret prisons for special interrogations. And they have been listened to as they made phone calls and sent e-mail even if they were here in the United States.
One Islamist from Virginia is serving a life sentence for calling on his young followers to wage jihad against Americans.
Jose Padilla — pronounce the ls as it turns out — was kept in a hole for three years. Now he's being prosecuted for crimes as a regular old criminal defendant. He's not getting out.
Detainees are on hunger strikes in Gitmo. They're not getting out.
Ramzi bin al-Shib, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and a bunch of others have been tracked down and are in cells.
Others have been spotted from predator drones and have received a hellfire missile.
Fifteen hundred days and nothing has happened. Even though we know Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri and Mr. Zarqawi would like something to happen — the sooner the better.
Still nothing.
Glassman concludes, "The terrorists' lack of success is the result of a response that has been aggressive and single minded. It has kept us safe. We tamper with it at our own extreme peril."
Mr. Glassman is right.
That's My Word.
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