Cheney: Why Sept. 11 Happened

I believe that Cheney is more right than wrong on this:

"The terrorists came to believe that they could strike America without paying any price. And so they continued to wage those attacks, making the world less safe and eventually striking the United States on 9/11," Cheney said.

The vice president highlighted seven occasions when he said he felt the United States did not hit back strongly enough. The first -- the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans -- resulted in U.S. troops being withdrawn from the city by the Reagan administration. Many of those killed came from Camp Lejeune, members of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Cheney said the American response was also inadequate after the killing of U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993; the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York the same year; the car bombing at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995; the killings at Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia, in 1996; the destruction of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998; and the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

"Time and time again, for the remainder of the 20th century, the terrorists hit America and America did not hit back hard enough," he said, rallying the crowd. "As President Bush has said, the only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission."

My only problem of course is with what we mean by "mission." Does it mean sticking around in a Iraq until they have a fully functioning democracy?