Terrorists "Created or Saved"

Claudia Rosett got to thinking about the Obama Administration's impossible-to-pin-down formulation for jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus package, with its non-existent congressional districts and all. She thought that maybe the "created or saved" phrase might be more appropriate in other contexts:

Every time it seems he’s said much, much more than enough, Jimmy Carter is back in the news — this time defending his handling 30 years ago of the Iran hostage crisis. . . .

And from those beginnings on Carter’s watch came an emboldened Islamic Republic of Iran, a terror-based regime which for 30 years has been brutalizing its own people, setting up global networks of terrorist finance, weaponry and murder, and is now closing on the nuclear bomb. How many lives has this cost already? How many more will this cost in times ahead? There may be no way to assign a precise number, but the answer is definitely “many” — including Iranians themselves, among them the five now sentenced to death for their roles in the June pro-democracy demonstrations. As Iran continues to export its message and tactics of terror, possibly soon to be turbo-charged with a nuclear arsenal, the odds keep climbing of devastating tolls to come. . . .

How many terrorists were “saved or created” by the kind of policies Jimmy Carter is defending? How many will be “saved or created” by the current policy of trying to diplomatically coddle Iran out of the nuclear bomb program — and ensuing clout — that its rulers are clearly bent on pursuing? How many terrorists will be “saved or created” by the project of putting (alleged) Sept. 11 self-described mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in lower Manhattan — thus providing him a world stage?

If that sounds macabre, it is nothing compared to the real results of policies which signal that America and its citizens and allies can be threatened, bullied, attacked, held hostage or murdered with relative impunity. . .

Worth thinking about.