BLATHER REVIEW

A response to Elderbear

Susie's looking for fiskings of the pinhead points made in the comments that Susie posted HERE.
Everybody's doin' it so, of course, I wanna get in on the action. I purposely haven't read any of the other fiskings yet.

1. Mr. Bush allowed Iraq to become a distraction from the war on terrorism.

Before we invaded Iraq, it was a stable nation.

If by "stable" you mean "cold, wooden and full of horse shit" then you're talking about John Kerry not Iraq.

Saddam provided a secular government and would not tolerate the Islamic fundamentalism that fuels al Queda—in fact, he brutally suppressed it.

Saddam didn't tolerate any "fundamentalists" at all, such as civil libertarians, or anyone who should even show a hint that they might not vote for Saddam in the next "election" - he brutally suppressed them.
He did however send money to the families of Palestinian terrorists who blew themselves up in order to kill innocent men, women and children in Israel.

He suppressed the warring of one tribe against another in Iraq because it threatened his own chokehold on the people, not because he thought that anti-Israeli/anti-American would-be killers are just too tacky to be tolerated.
For an article on the direct connections between al Qaeda and the Saddam Feyedeen see this WSJ article.

Don't get me wrong, he was an evil SOB, even worse than Dick Cheney!

Well, at least you didn't say "almost as bad as Dick Cheney" like I'm sure you wanted to. mheh.

But Iraq was off-limits for al Queda activities.

Nope, sorry. (See above linked article.)
Al Qaeda trained at Saalam Pak (sp?), just outside of Baghdad..

Saddam was well contained militarily by UN sanctions and the US enforcement of them. He posed no threat to the region, nor to the US homeland.

This sentence, just as it's written, is pretty much true. But it addresses Saddam's ability to militarily threaten the region. (At least one exception, however, is that he had violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire by having missiles that could reach Israel. I believe the range limit was 90 miles.)
The threat that he posed to the US - and everyone else - was WMD ending up in the hands of al Qaeda.

(Even though it's a digression let me just add: WMD. We know he had them and we know that he didn't provide evidence in December '02 that he'd destroyed them. So either he destroyed them and forgot to jot it down, or they're still there, either in Iraq or elsewhere.)

Now, Iraq is unstable, a “failed nation” at present,

Actually, it wont even be a nation until July 1st.

.. with little control of the populace.

Why does my hair hurt everytime I hear barking moonbat leftists start talking about "control of the populace"?
(That a rhetorical question, btw.)

Terrorism is rampant, aimed at Iraqi collaborators and American occupiers.

Well, I wouldn't call it rampant. The terror attacks are committed overwhelmingly by foreigners, not Iraqis. They attack the coalition forces and the UN as well as civilian marketplaces and Iraqis involved in the Iraqi government that you complain is a failure.

What's rampant in Iraq is the building of the schools, playgrounds, fresh water running in peoples' home for the first time ever, electricity being brought to all the people for the first time ever, and the revitalization of the Iraqi economy.

The US occupation of an arabic nation, an Islamic nation, fuels al Queda's recruiting. Iraq is one big training camp where live fire operations are possible. This is George W. Bush's gift to al Queda.

So... fighting terrorism causes terrorism. This is like the little kid who thinks that if he doesn't do anything about the bully then maybe the bully will decide to leave him alone. The terrorists are there and they want to kill us. 3,000 in one day? That's peanuts compared to what they'd like to do. We gotta get 'em now, bucko, before they start leaving craters where our cities and town used to be.

2. Mr. Bush lied to the American people and the world about the threat posed by Iraq.

Mr. Bush has destroyed most of the good-will that the United States received internationally after 9-11.

Yes, victimhood was good for our foreign relations, wasn't it...
That "good will" evaporated as soon as we went to Afghanistan to get the Taliban who, more than any other government, was responsible for 9-11. This is the lefty mentality of places like Berserkley that blames a schoolyard fight on the kid that threw the second punch; i.e. defended himself. Liberals like people that they can feel sorry for because strength and competition is inherently frightening to them. Victimhood requires sympathy, not respect.

He changed the focus from fighting terrorism (an action with broad international backing) to demonstrating that in US foreign policy, might makes right, a policy that has lost us the sympathy of many foreign nations.

Actually, regarding this whole sympathy/respect issue, right makes might. We are mighty because we're rich; we're rich because we're free; we're free because we refuse to be the victims of a foreign crown or a foreign terrorist.
I pity you for even having the thoughts that led you to write your post. You love that though, don't ya?! I pity you! Yay, you're feeling right at home now, eh?!

3. Mr. Bush has instituted policies that destroy the freedoms of Americans.

While this may make it marginally more difficult for terrorists to operate in the homeland, al Queda can point to impacting the American way of life. They counted coup on us, not just by knocking down some buildings and killing some people (Yes, 9-11 was horrible, but let's put it in perspective: depending on which source you choose, between 1,000 and 4,000 women die each year of domestic violence, itself a form of terrorism that leaves many severely scarred who manage to physically survive it. It scars children, too. Homeland Security? Give me Dennis Kucinich's cabinet level Department of Peace that would address this problem directly), but by changing our way of life.

Taking out that rediculously long parenthetical paragraph, the second sentence is "They counted coup on us, not just by knocking down some buildings and killing some people but by changing our way of life".

I'm no expert on the Patriot Act. In fact, I can remember almost nothing about it. I've heard and read about various aspects of it, but can't recall much. That's probably because none of what I heard/read particularly struck me as dangerous to our liberty.

The one aspect that I do recall is that it allows people to be wiretapped, not just phones. The thing about this is that the FBI still needs probable cause to get a warrant for a tap. If they were just tapping any phones that they suspect a suspect might be using, then there'd definately be a problem. But the Patriot Act only makes it different in that a warrant can be pursued to tap an addition phone being used by the known suspect, rather than having to get additional warrants on the same suspect over and over. Once the suspect is identified, the burden is only to prove to a judge that a certain phone is being used by that suspect. I got no problem with that.

As for that parenthetical paragraph: If between 1,000 and 4,000 women died of domestic violence due to the actions of an organized network of conspiratorial wife-beaters, then we'd be on the case in a hummingbird's heartbeat.
Other than that, I don't understand the purpose of your comparison of domestic violence to al Qaeda terrorism. Are we supposed to ignore them both? Fight them both? Ignore one and fight the other? Let al Qaeda kill 3,000 more people because 1,000 to 4,000 other people were killed by people who are not al Qaeda?

4. Mr. Bush has de-emphasized solving the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire

Stabilizing Israel and Palestine will remove a key recruiting point for al Queda. But, Mr. Bush chose to put less energy into solving this problem, and to focus in causing a problem in Iraq. Good for al Queda, bad for Israelis, bad for Palestinians. Bad for Americans.

I'm not going to get into a lengthy examination of how the indoctrinated hatred of Jews throughout the Middle East fuels all terrorism. I'll just say this:
If Bill Clinton couldn't bring peace to Israel/Palistine then no one could. The problem is not America or Clinton or Bush. The problem is Arafat.
Bush decided that Arafat will not be dealt with, and that, my friend, is the first step toward a lasting peace. The next step is for Israel and the Palistinians to stop killing each other.

5. If elected, Mr. Bush can be counted on to continue a policy of international beligerence, thus strengthening the terrorist call to action.

Mr. Bush has given no indication that he will repudiate Dick Cheney's implementation of the Plan for a New American Century, a plan of military intimidation and dominance. This belligerent behavior will serve only to isolate America and coerce cooperation from fear. But al Queda will not be coerced, it will only grow in the nooks and crannies and dark spaces of the globe. The Bush doctrine of preemption isolates us from our allies and fuels the fires of hatred that power terrorism.

# posted by Elderbear : 11:41

I'm not all that familiar with the Plan for a New American Century but I'm familiar with some of it's authors.

What you call "belligerence" is actually a pro-active addressing of the root of terrorism: an entire region of the world that is conditioned by it's culture to fuse religion with government and to hate non-muslims, especially Jews.
A democracy in Iraq, the rising democratic youth in Iran, the repudiation of terror in Lybia, and the general moderization of education and government in the muslim world is the answer. This scares a lot of people. "Oh, no! We're gonna upset a lot of racist Islamist sticks in the mud who wont like this at all!"
Yes, it will upset a lot of sociopathic mass murderers. Good. This will make them show their presence by getting involved in networks that we have infiltrated and/or are monitoring.

I am not frightened by a future where we confront both the threat and the root cause of the threat of terrorism. I am frightened by a future where we believe that if we just play as nice as possible, forgive tresspass after tresspass, that the bullies will leave us alone. Seems like peace; the peace we had on September 10th, 2001.
Only we didn't have peace, we only thought we did.

The future you want, Elderbear, is a frightening one indeed. We know it is because we've seen it -- on September 11th, 2001.

Now I'm gonna go read the other fiskings of this post that are up!
Harvey's fisking
Tom's fisking
Stephen's fisking

Posted by Tuning Spork at May 28, 2004 10:10 PM