Newt... Looking Better All The Time

This the first, the absolutely first, time in five years of war that Kid Various has ever seen a public official bring this topic up in public.

From Newt Gingrich's comments at Herzliyah Conference last week.

In 1984 I wrote that WMD and terrorism would pose a threat for US national security. If two or three cities are destroyed because of terrorism both the US and Israel's democracy will be eroded and both will become greater dictatorial societies.

Gingrich nails the most important point concerning the War. The Kid has never heard it brought up in a policy context, but he asumes that this must have been understood at higher levels. It is obvious.

The threat is not from terror, itself. The Enemy cannot destroy us, not with a nuclear weapon - not with 10. The threat is from our reaction to it. The Enemy understands that he doesn't not have to conquer us, he will force us to conquer ourselves. If we lose a city to a nuclear strike, that is the end of our existence as a free republic. We will be forced to initiate the rise of a national security state, and in the end, become the monsters that we fight.

This, combined with Newt's continued highlighting of the U.S.'s broken bureaucracy as a main cause of failure in Iraq (another very trenchant, very true observation) is marking him as one of this War's main theoretcians. The Administration would be very wise to heed Newt's advice.