This Isn't '2001 All Over Again'

No matter how fear-mongers spin it, Friday’s terror attempt on Northwest Flight 253 “was not 2001 all over again,” Walter Shapiro writes. GOP Rep. Pete King and others can wax "apocalyptic" about what “would have been remembered forevermore as the Christmas Day massacre,” but note that Up in the Air—which illustrates the blissful ease of business travel—is a hit at the multiplex. It's a "symbol of how far we have come since the 'world will never be the same' grief of 2001."

Yes, Umar Abdulmutallab slipped through sizable cracks in the security infrastructure, and they should be corrected. But think about the relative safety of the last eight years. “ America's often maligned defenses on the home front deserve credit for a level of safety and security that seemed unimaginable in the frightened months after 9/11,” Shapiro writes at Politics Daily. "That reality cannot be erased by a few gut-wrenching minutes on Christmas Day."
(More September 11 stories.)