Wishful thinking

New York magazine invited a bunch of people to speculate on what the world would be like if 9/11 hadn't happened. It sounds like the Democrats' dream: We'd have John Kerry for president. We'd no longer be dependent on imported oil. Giuliani would have no name recognition. New Orleans would have been rebuilt by now. But Ron Suskind calls it right. He says the London Airplane Bombing Plot would have succeeded.

Actually, you have to ask why it didn't happen. Was it because Al Qaeda had learned its lesson from Clinton's tough response to prior attacks? Or because Al Qaeda never existed? Or because the FBI had done its job right and connected the dots and foiled the plan? If the last were the case, we'd have probably had another event on the level of 9/11. Probably a dozen airliners exploding in midflight around the world. Then everything would probably be the same, except we wouldn't have as much evidence of who was to blame.

As subsequent events have demonstrated, fear and resolve slip away. Stupidity never falters.