Bumpersticker Politics and the GWOT

[jsamuel]

cross posted at DailyKos http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/25/214721/901

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/25/214721/901

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until its FREE." - On the back of one of Arkansas' state senators in December of 2005. You may have heard the name Holt. He ran for Attorney general in 2006 and thankfully lost to a good Democrat. Anyway, that night I decided that "Bumpersticker Politics" was a big problem in our country. It doesn't have to make sense as long as you make the reader feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Like they got the joke and no one else did. Then they will agree with it, even though it is stupid and is a horrible policy.

However, it is really not much different from the "talking points" that are handed out to Republicans that we have grown so accustomed to. This diary is inspired by John Edwards, but is my own personal views.

Video of John Edwards on the Bumpersticker GWOT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaxJc7nT-TY

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Even Fox News can't resist this story.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,275028,00.html

John Edwards Calls War on Terror Bush's 'Bumper Sticker' Slogan

"It is now clear that George Bush's misnamed 'War on Terror' has backfired — and is now part of the problem," Edwards told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "The War on Terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe. It's a bumper sticker, not a plan."

...

"I don't understand why a Democratic candidate would be in denial of what's actually going on," Giuliani told FOX News. "This global War on Terror is going on whether John Edwards recognizes it or not. It's not like it's controlled, there are people planning to come here and kill us all over the world."

...

"He’s used this doctrine like a sledgehammer to justify the biggest abuses of his administration," Edwards said.

Edwards proposed his own strategy — withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in less than a year, closing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and working to rebuild the U.S. military.

...

We've been had. On 9/11, instead of having a president that would tell us everything was going to be ok, instead of telling us that we needed to get those responsible and not overreact, we got a madman who thought that we were at war with "Islamo-fascists", whatever the heck those are.

As we well know, the fear has been used quite effectively to make us hand over our rights and freedoms (not to mention wallets) in order to feel safe again. However, the worst part is that we are less safe than ever before and in the worst financial shape. We might not be feeling it all now, but like when you are filling up your credit cards, you don't feel it until you start trying to pay them off.

Thankfully, John Edwards is the first major contender to lay the truth out there. That the GWOT is a farse. It is the idea of a madman hellbent on taking the terrorists' view of the world. That we are in a clash of civilizations that will bring about the end of the world. I call bullshit. We were attacked by an unbelievably small number of people who are an unbelievably small sect of Muslims. Yet he used this as an excuse to invade and overthrow governments while killing hundreds of thousands more people.

Seriously, 9/11 was a blip on the radar when compared to WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the second Iraq War. It hurt, badly, but a good President would have put the event in context and not let the country go crazy. One cannot compare the loss of human life, but one can recognize the difference in scale between 3,000 and 600,000. What I want to know is why aren't we having a GWOH (Global War on Hurricanes)? While one does have to recognize that 9/11 was a purposeful attack and Katrina was at best an accident, the impact was relatively similar due to the mass exodus of an entire major US city.

I am all for catching terrorists and preventing any more attacks and support all kinds of great ideas to implement this. One great example of where we went right is the New Jersey terrorists.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20070511&articleId=5616

The US Justice Department has charged six immigrants in New Jersey with participating in an alleged terrorist plot to attack a heavily fortified US Army base in the state, according to federal court papers filed Tuesday. FBI officials say the accused—four ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, one Jordanian and a young man from Turkey who had all lived in the US for years—were planning to kill scores, if not hundreds, of US soldiers at Fort Dix.

...

All that is known about a supposed conspiracy before the infiltration of the FBI’s man is that several of the six men had engaged in target practice at a firing range in Pennsylvania, while shouting “Allah Akbar!” Although prosecutors claim the plot had already been hatched, this did not stop one of the accused men, in January 2006, from throwing all caution to the wind and taking a videotape of their activities to a store where he asked a clerk to copy it onto a DVD. The employee, alarmed by a video showing 10 men shooting weapons and shouting Arabic slogans, contacted the FBI.

Two months after the FBI had been tipped off about the videotape the informant befriended Mohamad Shnewer, a Philadelphia cab driver, who prosecutors claim was the ringleader. Shnewer introduced the informant to three brothers—Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka—undocumented immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who lived in Cherry Hill and ran a roofing company out of their garage. The group often held paintball games in the woods near the Dukas’s home.

The 16-month investigation, which ultimately involved two informants and dozens of recorded sessions with the accused, has all the earmarks of a sting operation, in which the federal government manufactured a plot in order to entrap the six men. Much has been made of the map of Fort Dix, which Sedar Tartar retrieved from his father’s restaurant, which delivered food to the military camp. Tatar reportedly expressed his concern for his family if he were caught with the map, but the informant insisted that he get it.

While I have been skeptical of any of these "foiled terrorist plots," this shows how the "pre-9/11" thinking of the Democrats worked. The Republicans have been complaining about the "law-enforcement approach" to terrorism. Well, that approach works and when it does, they scream that it only means that we need more wars.

I know I am preaching to the choir here, but sometimes these things need to be said and I am glad that someone with a big megaphone is finally saying them. Rudy, you can kiss your "9/11 9/11 9/11" talking points goodbye.

[jsamuel]

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