As readers of Arthur Conan Doyle will recall, only Sherlock Holmes appreciated the significance of the dog that didn’t bark. Americans may be similarly oblivious to the fact that jihadists have not launched a successful attack in the U.S. since 9/11. As a result, we have given little credit to the painstaking work that kept them from occurring. But last week’s terrorism in Mumbai ought to wake us up. Jihadists constantly invent new methods of causing mass terror, and their biggest ally is the complacency of those unwilling to do the necessary work to thwart them. This should mean continuing the vast majority of the strenuous efforts of the Bush administration – efforts far too little appreciated – and building on them in ways that do not infringe on civil liberties.
Last week, the Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano outlined several priorities for keeping the American homeland safe. First, lawmakers should not monkey with the basic substance of the Patriot Act, which enhanced the ability of government agencies to track terrorists’ finances and communications, and knocked down “walls” that kept American enforcement agencies from effectively collaborating. The act has worked well since October 2001, and most of the reasonable civil liberties concerns about the original act were fixed when it was reauthorized in 2006. Similarly, lawmakers should not weaken the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was meticulously crafted to balance security with liberty.
