Obama: America Can “Absorb” Another 9/11

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Written By:
Rob Port

Sep 21, 2010
9:50pm

I think a lot of people are going to find this comment from Obama, made to journalist Bob Woodward in an interview for his latest book, is probably going to upset a lot of people:

Woodward’s book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

Like Ace, I think this has been a long-term trend in thinking on the left. Attacks like 9/11 are just the price of doing business to them. We don’t let the yearly death toll from car accidents deter us from driving, so why should we try to solve the problem of international Islamic terrorism?

But that’s a facile argument. Terrorist attacks are not car accidents. They are not to be absorbed as a “cost of doing business.” Accepting that they’re going to happen means giving up.

And I, for one, do not want to give up in the war on terror.