Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart launched his newest web venture, Big Peace. It will do for national security, what Big Hollywood has done for culture, Big Journalism for the media and Big Government for domestic policy. It has also caused me to climb into the way-back machine.

In 1985, I was an exchange student at a gymnasium (high school) in Bremen, West Germany. It was an anxious time; with renewed leftist terrorist attacks and hijackings throughout Europe. (The TWA airplane which took me to Frankfurt was hijacked about a week later.)  The Middle East was, predictably, tense. The Soviet Union looked as strong as ever. America was coming out of an economic and psychological malaise, but much of Europe, and U.S. political and media elites, were openly worried about a “warmongering” US President who didn’t understand complex foreign policy and might just start a war for kicks.

For those readers under forty, the political debates at the time centered on MX and Minuteman missiles, nuclear disarmament and small dust-ups like the Contras in Nicaragua. One night over dinner, my otherwise gracious German hosts, along with some of their friends, berated me for US foreign policy. Most every problem in the world could somehow be traced back to the U.S. They were particularly incensed about US Government support for the Contra rebels, fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

America should stay out of the affairs of all other countries, I was lectured. It shouldn’t interfere in any of the domestic squabbles in other nations. I replied that I understood that, but the Sandinistas were communist dictators who were supported by the Soviets and Cuba, so it was probable we would be involved.

Support for the Sandinistas from other countries was immaterial, I was told. America should be better and never involve itself in another country’s affairs, they argued.

So, I replied, what about that Berlin Airlift?

Oh, America had to do that, my German hosts replied. That was totally different.

It always is.

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Attorney General Eric Holder testified the other day before the House Judiciary Committee.   Republican congressman Lamar Smith asked him what seemed to be a pretty simple question.

Regarding the perpetrators in the last three terror attacks (two, thank God, unsuccessful) on our homeland (Fort Hood, the Christmas day bomber, and the Times Square bomber), Smith asked our Attorney General “Do you feel these individuals…might have been incited to take the actions they did because of radical Islam?”

Holder feigned to not understand.   “ Because of…?”

Smith:  “Because of radical Islam.”

Holder: “There are a variety of reasons people do these things.”

Smith re-worded the same question and re-asked it six times, with Holder refusing to acknowledge what is as obvious as the fact that I am typing these words and you are reading them.  That every major incident of terror of recent years has been performed by Muslims and that all of them associate their particular theology with their acts of terror.

The real question today is who is governing America and what exactly is the agenda of those who sit in the seat of power of our own country?

It is no wonder that most Americans are squirming around with the most profound sense of uneasiness.  When the chief law enforcement officer of the United States refuses to acknowledge what is clear and true – that those perpetrating terror today are uniformly Muslim and motivated by Islamic theology of one form or another – how in the world can we possibly feel safe?

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Lost in the pre and post-election analysis out of Massachusetts has been the major policy differences between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown over foreign policy and defense.  The issue garnered some attention briefly during their final debate, when Coakley erred saying terrorists “were gone from Afghanistan.”  But then the attentions of the media quickly turned back to the health care debate.

In campaigning with Brown in the final days, Rudy Giuliani mapped out the battle lines: “This election will send a signal, and a very dramatic one, that we are going in the wrong direction on terrorism, and we need to change it, and change it now.”  Giuliani added: Scott’s background in the military speaks volumes about his understanding of what we face.  And frankly his opponent’s ignorance about the issues facing us is astounding.”

From the start candidate Brown was unequivocal on defense matters.  A 30-year Veteran of the National Guard, still serving as a lt. colonel, Brown unashamedly backed the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.    It’s notable that not once did he seek to separate himself from the Bush foreign policy agenda.

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President Bill Clinton should be cut a lot of slack when it comes to 9/11. Sure the attack was planned under his watch, and sure President Clinton cowardly avoided taking custody of Osama bin Laden when Sudan offered him on a platter.

The truth of the matter is that prior to the 9/11 Jihad attack, there was no way in the world the American people would have stood for the large scale war that was necessary in order to fight this new kind of Jihad army.

Think about it this way, even after the Jihadis have murdered thousands upon thousands of people all around the world, including here in America on 9/11, the American Left still think it’s all America’s fault and that we deserved it, and therefore we have no legitimate right to fight back. Just image how much resistance there would have been toward going into Afghanistan prior to 9/11.

Add to the whack-o Left the fact that the Right would have accused Clinton of simply trying to distract attention away from his perjury case, and it should be obvious that Clinton didn’t have much political capital in reserve to convince the country that a preemptive war was necessary to avoid a large scale attack against an American city.

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For the Left, one of the most defining images of the previous administration can be summed up in three words “ My Pet Goat.”

If you remember, when President Bush was informed of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center, while his photo op with school children at the Emma  E. Booker elementary school was about to start. For the next several minutes, (much maligned by Michael Moore, in “Faranheit 9/11″) we saw a man confused by the situation. It has been joked about by comedians as him wanting to see how the story ended.

Every time I watch this footage, I always saw a strong man, who knew that twenty school children had looked forward to their chance to read to the President, for weeks. He decided they would not be disappointed. And knowing that this was an attack on the United States, the President did his best to neither disappoint nor alarm the children.

I’ve always imagined his narcissistic predecessor bolting straight out of the room and into a bunker, stepping over any children in his path. In reality, what could the President do? In that moment of confusion there really was nothing that could be done, other than have him sit there uncomfortably, and pretend that everything was normal. It takes a strong man not to flinch under adversity.

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