Do Democrats Lose When America Succeeds in the “War on Terror”? Why?
I loathe President Bush and think he has performed very poorly in every aspect of his stewardship. I believe the Iraq war is a failure and has harmed our ability to respond to terrorism around the world. I think the Patriot Act does nothing to protect us from terrorism but that it harms Americans by granting nearly every violation of our civil rights that over-reaching government police agencies have been begging for over the past 50 years. I think the Republicans have proven to be a complete failure in making our government smaller/better as they promised they would. I guess you could say that If I went by the mantra my mom taught me, “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.” the Republicans wouldn’t be mentioned on this blog.
All of this said, I think we on the left sometimes wear our tin foil hats a little too tightly.
On his excellent blog, 3rd Avenue, Oldenburg had this thought in one of his posts:
In other news, I don’t buy this latest “thwarted Al Qaeda attack.” Maybe all the manipulation and abuse of intelligence, the scaremongering, and lies of the Bush Administration has jaded me so that when their really is a wolf, I don’t believe it. But why does Al Qaeda only threaten the U.S. at the end of the summer/early fall of even numbered years, just when the GOP looks like they might lose an election?
One of the best blogs from the left in Utah is Part of the Plan by Ed Partridge (I usually call him Sam on my page because of his historical pseudonymous postings on my blog). Yesterday he wrote:
…the Department of Homeland Security has once again trotted out a reason to raise the so-called “threat level” and, in a big press conference, reminded America that if it were not for the intrepid Bush Administration, the evil-doers would once more have struck (for some curious reason, using commercial airliners again).
Well, color me skeptical. While this is still a “developing story”, as they say, here is my prediction:
The Brits will ultimately determine that this is just a bunch of amateur al Qaeda ”wanna-bees”, just like the clowns we busted in Miami not long ago.
The closer we get to the November election, the more of this kind of stuff we can expect. It’s right there in Karl Rove’s Election Playbook, on page 367.
I don’t think the Bush administration busts terrorist groups as part of a Republican campaign strategy. It is possible given their track record but it just doesn’t seem logical to me that this group in Britain or the group of “clowns” in Miami were busted for partisan advantage.
A good question arises though. What if these busts were timed for political advantage? Why do we automatically assume that busting terrorists who mean to harm innocent Americans or our allies only benefits the Republican Party? Could it be that Democrats have spent so much time, effort, and money bitching about Bush’s every move in the “War on Terror” that we are perceived as being against the busting of those who would blow up airplanes over the Atlantic? Why have Democrats put themselves in the position where they could be harmed politically by the capture of Islamic terrorists planning an attack on our civilian population?
UPDATE 08/11/2006 2:22PM:
Part of the Plan responds. Its hard not to agree with this:
What makes me skeptical is hearing that within hours of the announcement of the arrests, the RNC sent out a fundraising email which said
In the middle of a war on terror, we need to remain focused on furthering Republican ideas more than ever before… Please make your commitment felt with a financial contribution for $500, $250, $100, $50, $35 or $25 to the Republican National Committee today…
It’s all this blatant wrapping-themselves-in-the-flag crap that makes me question whether some of these things aren’t planned and staged.
Even in the face of all of their many plainly evident failures in neutralizing Islamic extremism around the world, Republicans for some reason have convinced themselves and many voters that they have the answers when it comes to National Security. It is very similar to how they have convinced themselves and a strikingly large number of voters (especially in Utah) that they are the party of small government. It is too bad more voters don’t ask for results instead of rhetoric. I often wonder how much longer Republicans can keep pulling this con off.
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Republican strength on National Security comes down to the fact that Republicans are “doing something.” This isn’t meant to imply that the “something” is actually good, but merely that the Republicans can at least talk about thwarting Al Qaeda and taking the fight to the enemy.
Democrats haven’t articulated a plan for doing anything on National Security. Until they do so in a convincing way, the Republicans will be stronger on National Security.
It’s sad. Until the Democrats have a viable alternative to the Republicans on National Security, we won’t have the real debate that this country needs on National Security.
Comment by Daniel — August 13, 2006 @ 12:14 am
This comment is off-topic to the general thrust of this post, but deals with this quote, “It is very similar to how they have convinced themselves and a strikingly large number of voters (especially in Utah) that they are the party of small government.”
Here’s some evidence for what you are talking about Jeremy. Check out Utah’s budget from FY 2001 to FY 2007. http://www.governor.utah.gov/gopb/2007budgetsummary.pdf The good stuff starts on page 273 or so. Total appropriations in Utah have gone from $3.7 billion in FY 2001 to $4.9 billion in FY 2007. That is sick and Republicans in Utah should be ashamed to have voted for such reckless spenders.
Comment by Daniel — August 13, 2006 @ 12:24 am
One more thing. Here’s an interesting article in the NY Times about Democrats anti-war campaign. It is worth a read in context of Democrats and National Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/weekinreview/13tanen.html?ref=weekinreview
Comment by Daniel — August 13, 2006 @ 12:45 am
Daniel,
Thanks for the information on Utah’s budget increases! That is very interesting and will make for a great blogpost.
I agree with the issues brought up in the NYTimes piece you linked to and this is a lot of what I was concerned about in this blog post.
I’ve said before that when Democrats openly attack the President on everything he does relating to Foreign policy we risk being labeled as being “on the other side” instead of “the loyal opposition”. I hate that about what my party has done nationally. It needs to be changed.
Comment by Jeremy Manning — August 15, 2006 @ 8:55 pm