President Bush made another stop on his Fall of Fear Tour Monday, delivering a thunderingly obvious speech in which he repeatedly, strenuously, and desperately tried to convince us of something we're already convinced of -- that terrorists are not nice people.
"The terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, 2001 are men without conscience, but they're not madmen.
They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil but not insane." (Interesting diagnosis. So the killers of al Qaeda are "not madmen," but Saddam Hussein was, as Bush insisted here, here, here, here, and here? Hmmm. Since we went after Saddam and not the terrorists, does this mean that, in Bush's moral hierarchy, insane trumps evil?).
Thanks for the heads up, Mr. President. What's next, a compelling argument that fire is hot? That the night is dark? That K-Fed can't sing?
Memo to the White House: we haven't forgotten 9/11. We've seen the beheading videos. We remember Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, suicide bombers blowing up weddings, the horrors of London, Bali, and Madrid. We understand why we have to take off our shoes at the airport and can't have hair gel in our carry-ons.
We all stipulate to your assertion. Indeed, is there anyone in America not currently taking heavy-duty meds or living in a padded room who believes that terrorists are anything other than bloodthirsty mass murderers?
But there was Bush, in the words of the AP, "quoting extensively from letters, Web site statements, audio recordings and videotapes purportedly from terrorists, as well as documents found in various raids" in an effort to make his case.
And he pulled out all the rhetorical stops. We got mention of a recently captured al Qaeda document describing the group's plans to take over Iraq's Anbar province and create what Bush called "an elaborate al Qaeda governing structure for the region that includes an Education Department, a Social Services Department, a Justice Department, and an 'Execution Unit' responsible for 'Sorting out, Arrest, Murder, and Destruction.'" (It's hard to say which would make the right-wing madder, the Execution Unit or the Education Dept.! Leave No Terrorist Behind). We got a blast-from-the-past citation of "a grisly al Qaeda manual" found in 2000 in London "that includes chapters with titles such as 'Guidelines for Beating and Killing Hostages.'" We even got the now-obligatory Nazi comparison with a bonus association to Communism tossed in for good measure.
"Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them," said Bush. "The question is 'Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?'"
Actually, Mr. President that isn't the question (the answer to that one is a no-brainer; we've been listening and paying attention for coming up on 5 years now). The real question at hand in 2006 is, what is the most effective way to fight what we all agree is the threat of terrorism, a threat as grave as Nazism and Communism were?
As much as Republican candidates would like us to forget it, the White House made Iraq the centerpiece of our war on terror -- a strategy with tragic consequences. It has left our military depleted, our first responders underfunded, our ports and railways vulnerable, and has diverted our resources from pursuing the real enemy.
The administration's attempts to fight off the public's anger over Iraq have become increasingly anxious and defensive -- not surprising giving the Pentagon's latest assessment of Iraq, and the fact that 52% of Americans have now seen through the administration's smoke and mirrors, and recognize that the war in Iraq has been a distraction in the fight against terrorists.
Just listen to the tone of the administration's terrorism strategy update, released before Bush's speech. It has all the earmarks of a guilty 5-year-old trying to prove that the broken lamp was not really his fault. Terrorism, insists the report, "is not simply a result of hostility to U.S. policy in Iraq. The United States was attacked on September 11 and many years earlier, well before we toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. Moreover, countries that did not participate in coalition efforts in Iraq have not been spared from terror attacks." So there! I have no doubt that if the 23-page document could have stuck out its tongue, it would have.
We know that Iraq didn't create terrorism (although it has created a lot of new terrorists), just as we know that terrorists are evil men who want to do us harm. But we also know that George Bush doesn't have a clue about how to deal either with Iraq or the war on terror.
So he's going to keep trying to frighten us, and convince us that staying the course -- and crossing our fingers -- will allow us to "win the war on terror."
Sadly, as ludicrous as the president's "newsflash: terrorists want to kill us" speech was, if the Democrats don't step up and vociferously and consistently counter it with a compelling "we will keep you safer" argument, the Bush scare strategy will once again prove effective.
Trust me, Execution Units, Nazis, and grisly al Qaeda manuals (even 6-year-old editions) always trump a fuzzy message.
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