A War over risk assessment

The Democrats and Republicans differing views regarding how to fight the war against Islamo-fascism really comes down to differing risk assessments. As Rich Lowry writes in his column, The One-Percent Problem. Dick Cheney is right., just because something is unlikely doesn't mean we need not be on guard against it.

Ron Suskind's best-selling book The One Percent Doctrine refers to Vice President Dick Cheney's axiom that if there is a one-percent chance of a nuclear bomb going off in an American city, the U.S. government has to respond with all the urgency as if there is a 100 percent chance of such an event. When Suskind's book appeared, there was much clucking about Cheney's thinking so dire, so dark, so unmodulated.

But Cheney's vision can only be considered unhinged if a fog of complacency descends about the terror threat facing us. Whenever that threat becomes clear again, as it has in the wake of the breakup of a plot in Britain to blow airliners from the sky, everyone begins to think like Dick Cheney, or maybe more so: If there is a mere .0001-percent chance of a terrorist smuggling liquid explosives on a flight from Denver to Green Bay, Wis., no one can carry on hair gel, and new mothers must present their baby formula for inspection.

The standard Democrat response to the latest terrorist attempt in Britain has been to argue that the war in Iraq is diverting resources away from intelligence gathering. But here again, Lowry points out that Democrats aren't just soft when it comes to handing our enemies a victory in Iraq by "redeploying to Japan" (as Democrat Representative Murtha proposed), they are soft in a multitude of ways.

The same Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq tend to oppose the National Security Agency surveillance program, condemn aggressive interrogations, and complain about the Patriot Act. It is all part of a worldview that wishes away dangers when they demand philosophically uncongenial responses, defined as roughly anything that doesn't involve shoveling federal money to localities.

Perhaps it's time to apply the one-percent rule to Iran's nuclear program. Sure, maybe Iran will, once having developed nuclear weapons, never dare nuke Los Angeles or New York. But there is at least a one-percent chance that they might. Perhaps it is not too late to topple Iran's regime before it starts a nuclear war, a war that was foreseen by everyone who subscribes to Dick Cheney's one-percent rule.