… Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage “al Qaeda types” to think that “they can break the will of the American people.”
The idea is that since 18-year incumbent Joe Lieberman lost based on his support for Iraq, Americans opposing the war are waving a white flag of surrender to terrorists.
This is stunningly ignorant logic, as well as annoyingly consistent with the Bush administration’s fundamentalist myth that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden - a claim by now well-discounted, most notably by a presidential commission.
And yet the presidential fog machine has continued to belch out its Iraq-al Qaeda-link fumes to the extent that a recent poll suggests that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda. More people than ever now believe, according to a new poll, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, the number who believe in the al Qaeda link is almost precisely the same number of Americans - 62 percent - who believe we are bogged down in Iraq.
For Cheney - and other Republicans like GOP National Chairman Ken Mehlman - to suggest that those Americans are encouraging terrorism is reprehensible.
Cheney’s comments came out a day before British intelligence officials announced they had thwarted a major terrorist attack. Surely Cheney was aware of the plot and the work to thwart it, and was no doubt aware of the timing of yesterday’s announcement.
To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the insane.
Has Cheney completely lost it?
The latest terror scare is upsetting enough: It is bound to lead to havoc and chaos both domestically and internationally. It could damage the economy if fears on flying are sustained. It reopens the profound wounds of 9/11, a scab we should figure by now will never completely heal.
But the real terror is this: While our Vacationer- in-Chief and his vice president shut down dissent, and discourage questions about the way our government has directed our intelligence and military resources toward a single target in Iraq, we are no closer to understanding or dismantling the threat of al Qaeda.
Cheney’s remarks underscore just how unsophisticated our understanding of terrorism is. We have no more understanding of the global forces at work that lead so many to want to bomb and destroy innocent lives than we did five years ago.
America’s latest crisis is not what happened in Connecticut; it’s what was going to happen in airplanes over the Atlantic.
The immoral and ridiculous claims coming out of the Bush administration’s reign of error could ultimately be responsible for the kind of casualties that al Qaeda can only dream of.
Though I usually don’t do this, I’ve included almost the whole piece here because it’s an important and nuanced point. Suggesting that U.S. foreign policy might have adverse consequences for us and for the global balance of power was once forbidden. (There’s research to prove it.) Now, the topic is on the table. Unfortunately it seems to be a case of the papers following the public’s lead (as opposed to aggressively reporting information before this tide of deaths and injuries). But it’s starting to happen. We’re probably in for more terror alerts this fall and we’ll definitely have something big happen before 2008. The more news consumers know about the mechanics of the operation beforehand, the better.
Foolin’ Us Again
There’s been some long overdue analysis (in the media and elsewhere) criticizing the administration for the way in which it has seemingly politicized the latest terror alert. That particular play is nothing new, but the analysis by the media seems to be a bit more critical. An example, via AmericaBlog, from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Though I usually don’t do this, I’ve included almost the whole piece here because it’s an important and nuanced point. Suggesting that U.S. foreign policy might have adverse consequences for us and for the global balance of power was once forbidden. (There’s research to prove it.) Now, the topic is on the table. Unfortunately it seems to be a case of the papers following the public’s lead (as opposed to aggressively reporting information before this tide of deaths and injuries). But it’s starting to happen. We’re probably in for more terror alerts this fall and we’ll definitely have something big happen before 2008. The more news consumers know about the mechanics of the operation beforehand, the better.
This entry was posted on August 11, 2006 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Color Commentary, Foreshadowing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.