By Frank Rich's Standards, Bush Is A Success

Ann Coulter is a national treasure not just because she puts Liberals into a sputtering rage or because she has oh-so-proper Republicans reaching for the smelling salts. She also does some interesting research. In this case she reaches for the jawbone of an ass to smite the left.

The ass in question is Frank Rich who undoubtedly wishes he had never written:

"Since major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough."

Ann writes:

A year after the 9/11 attack, The New York Times' Frank Rich was carping about Bush's national security plans, saying we could judge Bush's war on terror by whether there was a major al-Qaida attack in 2003, which -- according to Rich -- would have been on al-Qaida's normal schedule.

Rich wrote: "Since major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough." ("Never Forget What?" New York Times, Sept. 14, 2002.)

There wasn't a major al-Qaida attack in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007. Manifestly, liberals thought there would be: They announced a standard of success that they expected Bush to fail.

As Bush has said, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, the terrorists only have to be right one time. Bush has been right 100 percent of the time for seven years -- so much so that Americans have completely forgotten about the threat of Islamic terrorism.

For his thanks, President Bush has been the target of almost unimaginable calumnies -- the sort of invective liberals usually reserve for seniors who don't separate their recyclables properly. Compared to liberals' anger at Bush, there has always been something vaguely impersonal about their "anger" toward the terrorists.

By my count, roughly one in four books in print in the world at this very moment have the words "Bush" and "Lie" in their title. Barnes & Noble has been forced to add an "I Hate Bush" section. I don't believe there are as many anti-Hitler books.
Despite the fact that Hitler brought "change," promoted clean, energy-efficient mass transit by making the trains run on time, supported abortion for the non-master races, vastly expanded the power of the national government and was uniformly adored by college students and their professors, I gather that liberals don't like Hitler because they're constantly comparing him to Bush.

If you read Rich’s column you will find in it not just the conventional Liberal thinking that seems to be imbedded in concrete and can’t be budged by a nuclear weapon, but also two other interesting things.

First, the kind of Liberal Rich represents were saying loudly and proudly (this was prior to our going into Iraq):

That Iraq is ''a grave and gathering danger,'' as the president also said, is not in doubt.

Liberals today would deny to the death that they believed that in 1992. Yet this was the conventional wisdom at that time and it’s why Congress gave the President the go-ahead to invade. And why did they believe it? Not because Bush “lied” to them but because that is what the Clinton administration had been saying for eight years before.

Second, Rich back in 2002 uses a familiar piece of distraction that partisans of all stripes use when they want to stop something: they cite reasons to do something else. In this article, Rich makes the case for invading: Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. He’s saying that the case can be made for invading all these countries, why pick on poor old “grave and gathering danger” Iraq.

The reason is really so simple that even I knew why before the President said it. And it’s the reason I continue to support him and why I believe he will be judged by history as a great president.