Washington Free Beacon

Covering the enemies of freedom the way the mainstream media won't

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The Trump administration on Thursday launched a federal civil rights investigation into the persecution of Jewish students inside California’s Etiwanda School District, a 14,000-student district in California’s inland empire.

It launched a similar probe into the American Musical Dramatic Academy, one of the top schools for developing Broadway stars.

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The George W. Bush administration faced criticism from the Left and its friends in the mainstream media, who accused Bush of downplaying the threat of al Qaeda before the attacks then for failing to respond to them in a strategically coherent way.

The critics include the journalist Peter Bergen, who is back again with the book "All The Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror," a history of the failed strategies of the American presidents who prosecuted our “Global War on Terror” in the wake of 9/11.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies executive director @JSchanzer addresses Bergen’s arguments for the Free Beacon:

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As for policy prescriptions, Bergen offers few.

He contends that better “day after” plans are needed in future wars. And “above all, American presidents must correctly judge and establish the kind of war upon which they and the nation are embarking.”

That’s thin gruel for a country still searching for answers 25 years after the worst ever terrorist attack on American soil.

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Jihadists were at war with America before 9/11, targeting us in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks soon thereafter.

“A ruthless, ideologically driven foreign enemy, capable of an attack more devastating in scale than Pearl Harbor, waged war against us,” former federal prosecutor @AndrewCMcCarthy
writes.

McCarthy led the prosecution of the terrorists who carried out the World Trade Center bombing. And yet, he says, “our government responded with subpoenas and arrest warrants, as if the challenge were merely a crime wave.”

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If the assessment of the post-9/11 legacy highlights the travails of detainees and the missteps of government that are on display in Second Wave, the verdict seems indecorous.

On the other hand, the jihadist second wave did fail; and a quarter-century later, a hybrid of law enforcement and war footing has made American counterterrorism exponentially more effective than the 2001 vintage. That’s an achievement.

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On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, there is—believe it or not—a debate about why the attacks occurred.

Some blame Israel, arguing that the Muslim world’s quarrel with the United States rests only on its relationship with the Jewish state. Others paint the attack as a natural response to U.S. imperialism. “Neither claim is true,” Free Beacon columnist @MikeWatsonVa writes.

Put simply: It’s not us, it’s them.

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“Shortly after 9/11, bin Laden said, ‘When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.’ He was right. He just didn’t understand the sources of American strength.”