The deteriorating health of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheik" imprisoned for his role in planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, has touched off a terror warning by the FBI:

The health of terrorist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheik, is deteriorating renewing fears that his death in prison could trigger an attack on the United States, officials said Thursday.

There is no credible indication that an attack on the U.S. is imminent, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. ...

Officials said the bulletin served merely as a reminder that Abdel-Rahman had called for retaliation by terror sympathizers if he died in prison. It cited a May 1998 news conference in which al-Qaida members distributed his last will and testament, in which Abdel-Rahman pleaded for followers to "extract the most violent revenge" should he die in U.S. custody.

The FBI did right by reminding people of the risk involved, but let's not kid ourselves. We took that risk when we put him in prison -- indeed, when we resolved to fight back against radical Islamists in any form. Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Muslims to attack America because of Abdel-Rahman's imprisonment, so his death really won't change much.

Besides, these calls have gone out many times over the last five years, and so far the terrorists have not succeeded in their plans to attack us. Why exactly is that? It's because we have not sat back on defense, waiting to parry whatever thrust comes at us from whatever direction it might. Our decision to fight a forward strategy against terrorists in their backyard rather than ours has crippled their ability to use their own forward strategy.

People scoff at this and claim our actions have created thousands of more jihadis, but that disregards the stunning losses the jihadis have taken over the last few years. Just last month, the Pentagon reversed its previous policy against releasing estimates of enemy losses in Iraq; we found out that the US had captured or killed almost 6,000 combatants in less than three months. That kind of pressure forces radical Islamists to recalculate their strategies to keep the US from gaining traction in the Middle East, and the result is that they're too busy defending their own territory to effectively strategize against our own.

Also, the engagement in their region allows us to gather more intelligence on their operations. That primary battlefield contact gives us an advantage in understanding their networks and their capabilities. It also puts them in contact with our military rather than our civil defense agencies like the FBI and local law enforcement, where we have the advantage in resources and capabilities. That allows our civil agencies to focus on prevention and investigation based on the intelligence we gather overseas. When this strategy is allowed to work as it should, it forms a formidable defense against the jihadis.

Events like the pending death of the blind sheikh should remind us of the threat, but don't believe for a moment that the jihadis will suddenly find new inspiration to penetrate our defenses because of it. They have tried and failed for over five years, and that failure is no coincidence.

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