NRO's Jim Geraghty has a nice little rant on the traitor Michael Moore's influence on the Democratic Party this past election, including this summation of Moore's belief that "there is no terrorist threat":
[...] Moore admits that more terrorist attacks are inevitable, but that his point is that the chances of any individual being killed by a terrorist is small. He audaciously points out that no Americans were killed in terrorist attacks in the United States in 2000, 2002 (Hey, how about the D.C. sniper? Or the LAX shooter?) or 2003. And that the chances of an American dying of a terrorist attack in 2001 were 1 in 100,000.Moore is trying to mitigate the reality of Islamofascist terrorism by arguing that the number of people who have been murdered is too small for such a great nation as ours to get too exercised about it. Now, despite the utter irresponsibility of this view, let us consider our nation's reaction to the atrocities of 11 September 2001: it shut down our airspace, shut down our stock markets, gravely taxed and wounded one of the world's great cities, and dealt a serious economic blow to many important domestic industries, such as transportation and tourism. There is no question that it exacerbated the recession of that year and that there are still reverberations from that loss of confidence.
My point, obviously, is that the damage done to our society by the murderers of 11 September 2001 went well beyond those "few" thousand dead. And it was inflicted, in the immediate sense, by nothing more than four airplanes and a small group of fanatics.
Next time out, it could be several train or truckloads of fertilizer on a bridge or near a school or a mall. Five hundred dead.
It could be a couple of cropdusters loaded down with nerve agents, passing over a football stadium. Five thousand dead.
It could be a small nuclear bomb, detonated in the middle of a major city. Fifty thousand dead.
This is not a movie or a nightmare, Moore-on; we all saw what can happen with our own eyes and felt it in our own hearts on that awful day three years ago. War was made upon us by psychopaths who believe in the dominanace of Islam. It will happen again ---and not because terrorism is a tool of fear to be used against America by a class of plutocrats who want to keep us down, but because Islamofascists are determined to kill us. You think that's a concoction of the Bushitler War Machine, Inc.? Do you have the [courage], all you paranoiac Leftists, to say that Islamofascist terrorism is being used as a pretext by the minions of Halliburton and the super oil conglomerates to steal our civil rights and break us down? Do you have the nerve to say what number of innocent Americans would be an acceptable number to see murdered in the next attack?
At the root of Moore's understanding of terrorism is a diseased sort of pacifism caused by self-loathing and moral cowardice. He and people who think like him lack the courage to stand for American exceptionalism or to accept our power in the world. They would rather be perceived as tolerant, post-modern ironists too cool to be bothered with such sentiments as patriotism and idealism than to genuinely support for others what they never had to earn for themselves. Democracy for Iraq? "But they were just fine as they were!" Justice for Saddam? "But he was never a threat to us!" Blah, blah, blah.
In many ways, America is an heroic culture. It is certainly a great nation ---the greatest of our time. And it is thus that heroes and great nations require their antipodes. They seek them out to define themselves by the standards of History: what will be their contribution to the advancement of the human race? We are fortunate that, in this time, we may be at least a witness to what our President and our military can do to move the world against the tyranny of militant Islam. It is an enormous and courageous undertaking ---and we have the power to transform whole nations. Do America and her friends choose to do this out of idleness or because of some irrational desire to conquer? No. I think History will show that we have done these bold and dynamic things for the most basic reasons of all: the peace and security of our own people.