| | AFP/Getty Images On Boston Commons the morning after the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Bear in mind that the primary questions being asked now are what, if anything, the FBI knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's descent into Islamic extremism, and what, if anything, they did about it. The Patriot Act created the means to answer such questions. Its primary weapon to prevent terror was the wiretap, a surveillance tool virtually everyone in law enforcement says is the best way to catch criminals. Two sections of the Patriot Act窶杯he "lone wolf" provision and "roving wiretaps" (both requiring authorization by a special court)窶背ere created precisely to identify and monitor an individual like Tamerlan Tsarnaev before he detonates a bomb in a crowded public place. Who can forget how the structures created to pr #file_links<D>\keywords11.txt,1,S] event more terror on U.S. soil turned into a pitched battle that consumed Washington policy makers for nearly a decade after 9/11? Accusations poured forth about "illegal dom #file_links<D>\keywords14.txt,1 #file_links<D>\keywords13.txt,1,S] ,S] estic eavesdropping" and a "domestic spying program," which violated "our values."It was all politicized hothouse hooey. No such thing happened. When its turn came, the Obama administration used the Patriot Act窶琶ts title now grimly appropriate窶蚤nd defended it in court. In 2011, the Obama administration embraced reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which Harry Reid years earlier promised to kill. On at least this one important issue, the Un-Bush president has been very much his reviled predecessor's mirror image. But let's, so to speak, cut to the chase. In contrast to the Bush era fight over ho #file_links<D>\keywords12.txt,1,S] w many judges had to approve surveillance of terrorism suspects, we had the transfixing spectacle last week of Bostonians okay with having their city transformed into a state of virtual martial law after the bombs went off. The citizens of Boston and its suburbs allowed massively armed SWAT teams to enter their homes, order residents out and eventually find the bullet-riddled Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lying half-dead in a boat. When it was over, people lined the streets to cheer the police army. You'd need more than a roving wiretap to find a peep of objection from the old Bush critics. Who's to quibble? Some are now asking whether the protections after 9/11 have waned in the past 12 years. After these events, a responsible Congress should want to find out. But let us posit an unimpeachable fact: Wha #file_links<D>\keywords15.txt,1,S] tever their eventual opinion of "Bush-Cheney," Bostonians and Americans generally would have happily signed off on a warrantless wiretap of the Tsarnaevs' phones before the deaths and mutilations of April 15, 2013. The long fight over the Bush domestic antiterror effort was a case study in partisan extremism run amok in Washington, even as a silent majority of Americans across the political spectrum wanted such protections. If at last we have consensus on the antiterror war, so be it. Write to henninger@wsj.com A version of this article appeared April 25, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Boston and the Un-Bush.
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