No no no, Bush is right here. The more money the terrorists have the better! I mean, what's the fun if they can't even put up a fight?
Slate makes a damn good point about the Clarke controversy:
The answer: Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, and their silence speaks loudly.
The reaction the right had to the Socialist victory in Spain upset me in a way most partisan conflicts don't. The audacity it took to demand that the Spanish continue to fight a war they never wished to enter, all for the ironic purpose of promoting democracy, astonished and offended me in a way few positions do. Forget that the defeated Government immediately attempted to twist the attacks for political gain, forget that the Socialists were within the poll's margin of error for victory, forget that the constant proclamations that the cowardly Spanish had allowed the terrorists to win certainly reinforced any victory the terrorists might have claimed, the very idea that we could somehow evaluate their foreign policy's morality through the lens of our own interests mere days after a vicious terrorist attack showed how little these people understood 9/11. For a group that is quick to grasp for ownership of the tragedy and quicker to remind us of its significance, they completely lost the ability to treat a grieving country with even a modicum of respect.
That, much more than the arguments over whether or not the terrorists won, is what incited my ire. But it's not the first time a government had given into terrorists.
Ronald Reagan's major military action was in Lebanon, where he deployed peacekeeping troops in the aftermath of Israel's 1982 invasion. Not long thereafter, a terrorist drove a truck packed with explosives into the headquarters of the First Battalion, killing 241 American servicemen. A few months later, Reagan pulled the troops out of Lebanon, placing them on offshore ships instead. Explained spokesman Larry Speakes: "We don't consider this a withdrawal but more of a redeployment."
So a terrorist killed hundreds of Americans in the hopes of getting us out of Lebanon and quickly succeeded. There was no other explanation, no other motivation for the "redeployment". In the face of terrorists, Reagan promptly gave into their demands.
So I want to know. Was Reagan an appeaser to terrorists? A coward? Unable to stand up to evil?
And if not, then how dare you open your mouth to criticize the Spanish.
I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, Richard Clarke simply makes sense on terrorism:
And that's the second reason. The attack in Madrid showed the vulnerabilities of the rails in Spain. We have all sorts of vulnerabilities in our country, chemical plants, railroads. We've done a very good job on passenger aircraft now, but there are all these other vulnerabilities that require enormous amount of money to reduce those vulnerabilities, and we're not doing that.
Russert: And three?
Clarke: And three is that we actually diverted military resources and intelligence resources from Afghanistan and from the hunt for bin Laden to the war in Iraq.
Russert: But Saddam is gone and that's a good thing?
Clarke: Saddam is gone is a good thing. If Fidel were gone, it would be a good thing. If Kim Il Sung were gone, it would be a good thing. And let's just make clear, our military performed admirably and they are heroes, but what price are we paying for this war on Iraq?
For a few weeks now, the Right's been all atwitter with proclamations that the attack in Madrid was terrorism's greatest triumph. It did, after all, throw an election. Never mind that the election was apparently tossed by the PP's lying about who carried out the attack and the popular disgust engendered from using terrorism so quickly for personal gain. That means little here. After all, as Andrew Sullivan said:
But it wasn't the new government that made this a victory for terrorism. It was the right wing commentators. Had they adopted the truthful and obvious explanation for what happened, mainly, that the PP was booted out because they tried to use the attack for political gain, the lesson everyone would have taken is terrorism shouldn't be used for political gain. Instead, the Right got started on an ever louder and shriller chorus that Al-Qaeda won, that Spain capitulated, that Europeans are afraid of terror, that the Islamo-fascists could chalk up a victory, that the terrorists, as it was, had won.
Had the Right not done everything in their power to make their misinterpretation the conventional wisdom, the terrorists certainly would be facing a muddier analysis. But by telling them so often and so loudly that they scored a victory, that the Spanish did everything they'd hoped, and that the rest of the world was furious with the weak-spined Spaniard (isolating America in a cavern of our own international arrogance is one of their favored tactics, as I remember) they happily reinforced and reaffirmed the most guarded hopes of Al-Qaeda. The terrorists didn't get a win because the people voted out the lying PP, they won because we keep telling them they did. Because we allowed them to sow dissension. Because we blamed the Spanish for doing the right thing and voting in a government that better agreed with the people. Had the Right (and the Left) immediately gone on the attack against lying politicians, it would simply have been chalked up as a defeat for the politically inept incumbent. Instead, our self-righteous commentators brought their own agendas to the table and, when the Spanish decided to go ahead and chart their own course, our spurned commentators turned around, patted the terrorists on the back, and began wailing about how they won.
Well done.
Dear Lousie,
What if we pay him $430,000 instead of $340,000 and only call him by his first name? Because then it's kind of like he's a different person and we've never paid him before. And if we do that, maybe he'll have different intelligence from now on!
Yours in the Crusade for Justice,
Lowelly Jacob
It hasn't even been a day, but the Right is already using the tragedy in Spain for political gain:
I really hate arguments as disengenuous as this one. The implication of point B doesn't follow point A because there's no evidence that John Ashcroft and the PATRIOT Act actually make us significantly safer against terrorists. It's political smearing at its worst; strongly implying a terrible charge without actually saying it. The sheer idea that, merely 12 hours after this tragedy occurred, people on the right are already using it to score point is nauseating. All serious and decent people will condemn Kate O'Beirne for this crap.
Spain took it on the chin today, suffering the worst terrorist attack in their history. Which group is responsible is unclear, but it's looking like Al-Qaeda was behind it. What utter slime they are; killing innocents who did nothing worse than board the train this morning.
Andrew Sullivan dishes:
Please submit your answer in essay format and with the appropriate citations. Thanks.
At what point will the American people stand up and say this is fucking ridiculous?:
The White House and Republican Congressional leaders have said they see no need to extend the congressionally mandated deadline, now set for May 27, and a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that Mr. Hastert would oppose any legislation to grant the extension.
But commission officials said there was no way to finish their work on time, a situation they attribute in part to delays by the Bush administration in turning over documents and other evidence.
The commission said Tuesday that it had not yet received a commitment from the administration for public testimony from prominent White House officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser. The panel said it was still in negotiations over the possibility of testimony from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
If I don't see John Kerry on a podium with representatives of the bereaved families and the head of the firefighters union decrying the Republican's habit of placing politics above our national security, I will cry myself to sleep at night.
As per Kevin's request, I think we need to examine Glenn's odd theory on the Middle East:
These folks are our enemies, and deserve to be treated as such. They don't deserve a state of their own. It's not clear that they even deserve to keep what they've got. I don't think this means that the Bush Administration should be taking direction action against them -- closing off their funding via shutting down Saddam is a good start, and a policy of slow strangulation directed at Arafat and his fellow terrorists is probably the most politic at the moment. We need to try to squeeze off the EU funding, too, especially now that it's been admitted to be part of a proxy war by the EU not just against Israel, but America.
...
I also don't write about it much because the Palestinians, fundamentally, are the cannon fodder of other people who don't like the United States, and the real way to resolve this problem is to deal with those other people. And so it's those other people who get the bulk of my attention.
But the amount of pious crap spouted about the Palestinians is so vast that every once in a while I do feel the need to cut through it by pointing out the facts.
That's not really the point, though. I tend to count myself in the Israeli camp as well, but that doesn't mean the conflict doesn't have to resolved. Think about it politically, as Glenn mentions, the Palestinians serve as the ultimate symbolic rallying cry for terrorist groups who hate us. The Arab world reports a very different picture of the conflict than we ever get, one of brutal oppression and abject humiliation, one that speaks to the fear all Arab countries have of being left behind and eventually subjugated by the West. Now, when your opponent has a powerful issue with which to recruit new followers and rally his existing ones against you, what should your move be?
If you are Glenn Reynolds, you might counsel exacerbating the issue, making your opponent stronger, confirming the fears of his adherents, and further putting yourself in danger. If you are a normal person, what you want to do is take the issue away from your opponent. It's not like this tactic is unknown in the US. Bush did it on education, Clinton did it on everything. Dean doing it on fiscal matters. To weaken your enemy you need to destroy what gives them strength. As far as terrorism goes, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the main propaganda piece used to prove our plans to oppress Arabs, as such, we need to prove it wrong and thus defuse the hatred that feed the terrorist organizations. We do that by successfully arbitrating the conflict and getting the Palestinians settled in a land of their own. Nothing else we could do would be half as effective at stopping terrorism as that.
Glenn's way, while allowing him to retain his sense of moral superiority, also ensures that the gulf between the West and the East will widen and terrorist recruitment will rise. The end result of that is not some victory against the Palestinians, it is more dead Americans, more 9/11's, and more fear. In essence, it is a recreation of the Middle East conflict with us as the Israelis and the Arab Street as the Palestinians, and I don't know who in their right mind would want to switch places with the Israelis at this juncture.
A drug bust in the Persian Gulf has turned up apparent ties to al-Qaeda.
We were going to nuke them, but the Navy wanted to go swimming afterwards.
And remember, kids - terrorists aren't selling drugs to make money off of a lucrative black market. They're selling drugs because all drugs are evil and anti-American, unless you have enough money, in which case they're merely a potential stumbling block in an otherwise stellar career.
Heard much about this? Yeah, me neither.
"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.
"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.
And remember, pledge drive -- hit the PayPal button on your left. Sorry I gotta keep doing this at the bottom of my posts, it feels awful, it's only 36 hours though for all we do on this blog over the year....show us some love.