Inconvenient Empirical Data

Read Powerline blogger John Hinderaker's piece, "Are we safer?". Excerpt:

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.

Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful.

He then goes on to list the major terrorist attacks since 1988 and how they've basically stopped since 2004. His conclusion is that something which has been done by the administration has kept Americans safer. You can believe otherwise, but you are ignoring the data.