For example, this morning the news report (i.e. allegedly hard news) talked about the "draconian" changes to American laws "severely curtailing" American "civil rights" and "civil liberties". What draconian laws would those be? Maybe it's my weaker grasp on the English language but "draconian", to me means...well draconian.  Of course, they are vaguely alluding to the "Patriot Act" that many on the left rail against as being a "wholesale surrender of our constitutional rights".  Of course, when pressed, most on the left are not able to actually articulate what in the Patriot Act is so vile and horrible.  The rest who have actually bothered to read the Patriot Act talk about how it could potentially be abused by the government. When Michael Moore is marched away to Guantanamo Bay to be held then we can worry. In the meantime, the left should stick with the facts and not paranoid fantasies.

The BBC went on to interview "average Americans".  Based on the BBCs reports, there are no Americans except maybe a hick or two in Iowa who a) feel safe (despite the "Draconian" laws) and Are against the US's actions in the war on terror.  "We should be trying to find out why people hate us and solve that!" said one interviewee in Chicago. "I don't know why we're in Iraq but it's not for the reasons they told us." said another in Portland a state described by the BBC as "split" between Democrats in Republicans (in the same way, I suppose, Massachusetts is split between Democrats and Republicans no doubt).

This kind of dribble from the BBC wouldn't be so obnoxious if it weren't taking place on 9/11. The problem with the intelligentsia on the left (And I use that phrase kindly) is that they fall into moral equivalence arguments easily when confronted with undeniably heinous acts by mideast terrorists and yet amazingly at the same time have no problem turning it all around and arguing that there is no deed we don't deserve.

Here are, in my mind, my opinions that I believe no reasonable human being could possibly object to:

• There has been no US foreign policy action  towards the Middle East that makes the United States deserving of having 4 civilian jet liners hijacked and 2 of them flown into the largest civilian building in the world, a third flown into the Pentagon and a last one targeting either the White House or Congress.
   
• Anyone who has bothered to listen or read the arguments by the Islamo Fascists should by now realize that these guys are little more than really well armed Klu Klux Klan types. You cannot excuse the vile actions of people simply because they don't happen to be white Anglo-Saxon males. These guys are as bad as the Nazis were. But don't take my word for it, read up on their own views. If they had their way they'd have extermination camps that would make Auschwitz look like a park.
   
• The United States has a fundamental sovereign right, having been attacked, to defend itself.  Its interests have been attacked by these forces for over a decade and using international institutions and treating these actions as law enforcement issues helped lead to 9/11.  The United States does not need the permission or blessing of any international body or group to carry out what it believes is self defense. The right of national self defense pre-exists international bodies (which some forget ones created by the United States in the first place). 

I believe that the United States has behaved extraordinarily well given the circumstances.  In the two years since 9/11 there have been no further attacks in the United States. There have been no significant terrorist attacks against the United States overseas (no USS Cole, no Embassy bombings, etc.).  The Taliban in Afghanistan is gone. Saddam Hussein is gone.

And while the BBC would describe US forces in Iraq as "bogged down", most objective people would consider the removal of Saddam Hussein with only a few hundred casualties to be an incredible achievement. Regardless if there's still snipers and uber-snipers (snipers with RPGs), Saddam is gone and the US is in control of Iraq. That several dozen troops have died is a tragedy but one must ask, what is the mortality rate per thousand per month of males aged 18-25 here in the US? I suspect in 9 months a random selection of 200,000 Americans of that demographic would show similar "casualties" from various sources. Iraq's not secure by any means but describing US troops in a "Quagmire" or being "bogged down" is a disservice to them and to those counting on those news organizations for factual reports.

And so here we are, 2 years from 9/11 and generally speaking, the War on Terror has been a great success.  Compare the progress made in the past 2 years to the first two years of World War II.  In 1943 US forces had just gotten into Italy. D-day was still in the future. And the war on Japan was still nearly 2 years from completion.  American casualties in World War II were in the hundreds of thousands.  Two years into this new campaign, troop losses still have not exceeded civilian losses from the first 9/11 attack. I would say that things are going pretty well.