Using Terrorism As A Political Tool
The Opinion Journal points out the egregious use of word of terrorism arrests as political fodder. This abusive practice is very much in evidence since the announcement of the thwarted plot to bomb airplanes. The American public must demand that politicians stop using terrorism for cheap political gain.
So, let's all just tell Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy to shut up already.
"This wasn't supposed to happen today," a U.S. official told the Washington Post of the arrests and terror alert. "It was supposed to happen several days from now. We hear the British lost track of one or two guys. They had to move." Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."
Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."
Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?
Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.
There is a large scale effort on the part of the left blogosphere right now to charge that Bush and Cheney engineered everything about yesterday's arrests because Ned Lamont won in Connecticut. No, really, there is. Because it's all about Ned. Talk about a single issue blindness. The comments of Reid and Kennedy also show a bizarre inability to see the forest because of all the trees in the way. They see the arrests as a single data point. They see Iraq as another. Iran, still another. Lebanon yet another. All separate, all unique, discreet events with no commonality. Except that they desperately want to blame Bush for all of it, of course.
But there are common links, there are ties with everything that is happening in this ongoing war (hint: It is not Bush, either. Nor is it America). The battlefronts are interconnected. We need to all realize that here in the West or it will be a long war indeed.
Other Links to this Post
-
Flopping Aces — Friday, 11 August , 2006 @ 12:02 pm
By AlwaysWatching, Friday, 11 August , 2006 @ 9:11 am
I have been surfing a lot of the liberal websites, and you are correct. They are trying everyway possible to spin this good thing, “Terrorist Plot Prevented†into some kind of bad thing for the Bush Administration.
I have not seen the left hate so much since the Reagan years. In fact a lot of this reminds me of them years. Remember: Reagan is a madman, a war monger, doesn’t know anything about foreign policy or economics. And now he is going down as one of the greatest American Presidents in our history.
By phil, Friday, 11 August , 2006 @ 10:37 am
This Just In -
Terror Arrests Bolster Democratic Case Against Bush
By Issac, Thursday, 28 September , 2006 @ 8:57 am
Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday major policy changes are needed because the Iraq war has divided the nation “almost as much as Vietnam.”
“So there's no doubt that our country is in much more danger now from terrorism than it would have been if we would have done what we should have done and stayed in Afghanistan,” he said on the campaign trail with his son, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jack Carter.
The former president said the Bush administration made a “terrible mistake” by invading Iraq and diverting troops from Afghanistan.
Jack Carter criticized his opponent, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., for supporting the Iraq war. Both Carters also said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should go.
“I think he's one of the worst secretaries of defense we've ever had,” the former president said of Rumsfeld. “Almost every decision he has made has aggravated his military subordinates and has also proved to be a mistake.”