RUSH: From the New York Times — this was yesterday, Scott Shane, that name should ring a bell: ”Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears’ — Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, FBI agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying 
bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a young Jordanian was charged with trying to blow up a skyscraper; in Springfield, Ill., a prison parolee was arrested for trying to attack the local federal building. Meanwhile, the Obama administration struggled to decide whether sending many more troops to Afghanistan would be the best way to forestall a future attack.
‘But important as they were, those news reports masked a surprising and perhaps heartening long-term trend: Many students of terrorism believe that in important ways, al-Qaeda and its ideology of global jihad are in a pronounced decline — with its central leadership thrown off balance as operatives are increasingly picked off by missiles and manhunts and, more important, with its tactics –‘ wait a second here. Wait just a second. This is the same New York Times who told us that everything we were doing in the war on terror was a waste, it was a bust, we had no business being in Iraq, Afghanistan, ah, really shouldn’t be there, either, just capture Bin Laden. Now all of a sudden they say we’re succeeding or did succeed so well that al-Qaeda is so fractured and disoriented that there’s no reason to fear terror attacks. That’s what the sum total of this story is, we really have an unrealistic fear of future terrorist attacks, and there are quotes from terrorism experts in this.
Now, this, again, to remind you, it’s yesterday’s New York Times written by the same New York Times national security expert Scott Shane, the same reporter who saw nothing wrong in leaking the name of the CIA interrogator who questioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. So the New York Times on September 27th, 2009, tells us that there’s really no reason to fear terror attacks anymore, that leaders have been picked off, they’re in a state of disarray. Can I take you back to the New York Times July 10th, 2001, headline: ‘The Declining Terrorist Threat,’ two months before 9/11. Two months before 9/11. ‘Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. None of these beliefs are based in fact,’ wrote the New York Times on July 10th, 2001.
In fact, ‘While many crimes are committed against Americans abroad (as at home), politically inspired terrorism, as opposed to more ordinary criminality motivated by simple greed, is not as common as most people may think.’ So two months before 9/11, the same worthless newspaper wrote about the declining terror threat and the sheer paranoia of the American people and the bigotry of the American people in judging most terrorists to be Islamists. Now, if history is any precedent, we ought to be preparing for another terror attack. As the New York Times has today or yesterday said, ‘We need to rethink our terror fears, really no reason to fear terror attacks anymore, we’ve picked off their leaders.’ I guess George Bush did that. They gonna credit it now? This guy’s downplaying ’em in the story today, he’s downplaying these five attempts, they were just chump change, amateurs, we really need to rethink this.
Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force. And we have seen rise to prominence the literal naivete, the dangerous naivete of a utopian-inspired left that basically has as its world perspective and experience academia and theory and philosophy, coupled with an arrogance and a conceit that is personified by President Obama that says they are the really smart people in the world, that only when they are leading the nation will the rest of the world which is all smarter than we are, too, only when the real true elites are leading this country will the rest of the world’s bad guys realize that the United States has turned a corner and is no longer a threat to them, and they can stand down and join us in this weapon-free worldwide utopia. That is the summation of where we are in this country, of course aided and abetted by the same kind of academic philosophical naivete in the State-Run Media.