The Mythical End to the Politics of Fear

[Fischkoepfin 1]

No one is in danger of being labeled a communist because they doubt the "war on terror". I doubt the war on terror, does that make me a communist?

It doesn't make you one but you can't deny that the labels are flying around just as fast and loose as they were in the 1950's. "Liberal" and "Leftist" might as well be today's "Communist" - and you can apparently be written off as such simply for expressing any view that contradicts with government policy with regards to the War on Terror, regardless of your stance on other issues.

Oh, and then there's "terrorist sympathesizer," regularly applied to anyone who questions the rationale (or lack thereof) of the war on terror or who criticizes the anti-Muslim rhetoric which has developed alongside the "war on terror"-language of fear.

Conversely, one could ask why are so many Americans obsessed with why other "people" are violently angry at us when we have many other domestic issues that face our own population such as health care, social security, the deficit and the security of our nation.

The security issue has been touted as the most important issues for close to 5 years now at the expense of all the other issues. And what is worse neither is the nation any safer than 5 years ago nor has the focus on security miraculously solved the other issues; on the contrary, many Americans are beginning to realize that the domestic problems have increased because now they not only fear terrorism but more importantly they have to fear for their economic survival.

Don't get me wrong, I see your point about terrorism and why people say the war against terrorism is not winnable but there are real people behind the terrorist acts. What comes first, our concerns about why people hate us so much (assumption) or the security of our nation? Is it truly our obligation to analyze why people supposedly hate us so much and not focus on defending our nation?

I don't see the two issues as disconnected. Figuring out why the US has become the enemy for many people around the world is actually doing a lot more for national security than dropping bombs on civilians or even terrorists. Of course, this should have been a lesson learned 30 years ago, but the people in power today are exactly the same who weren't willing to learn then.

[Lewis 0]

Don't get me wrong, I see your point about terrorism and why people say the war against terrorism is not winnable but there are real people behind the terrorist acts. What comes first, our concerns about why people hate us so much (assumption) or the security of our nation? Is it truly our obligation to analyze why people supposedly hate us so much and not focus on defending our nation?

I don't see the two issues as disconnected. Figuring out why the US has become the enemy for many people around the world is actually doing a lot more for national security than dropping bombs on civilians or even terrorists. Of course, this should have been a lesson learned 30 years ago, but the people in power today are exactly the same who weren't willing to learn then.

Well said.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I read this piece today and thought it kind of fits into this thread - good reading:

Bush fearmongering on Iraq loses its punch

By PHILIP GAILEY, Times Editor of Editorials

Published September 3, 2006

The war is going miserably in Iraq. And it's not going that well on the home front, either. Public support for the war is collapsing, and even some Republican hawks are beginning to distance themselves from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld quagmire in Iraq. But it turns out that critics of the war are just confused. They still think it's about weapons of mass destruction, regime change and democracy. They don't understand that the administration's disastrous enterprise in Iraq is a continuation of the last century's battles against Nazism, fascism and communism.

It took President Bush, Vice President ####### Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to open our eyes last week. This time the enemy is a "new type of fascism," Islamic extremism, and Iraq is ground zero in the struggle against this new -ism. They chose friendly audiences - the nation's two largest veterans organizations - to explain this to Republican nervous nellies and cut-and-run Democrats who, according to Rumsfeld, "still have not learned history lessons." Thank goodness Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are students of history and didn't listen to those foolish generals and diplomats who tried to warn them about what they were getting into by invading Iraq.

Rumsfeld set the tone of this latest stay-the-course campaign by suggesting to an American Legion audience in Salt Lake City that critics of the administration's Iraq policy are suffering from the same "moral and intellectual confusion about right and wrong" as those who tried to appease Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in the 1930s. Most of the criticism of the administration Iraq policy, he said, is coming from the "Blame America First" crowd, including journalists. Cheney, working the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, had his own variation of Rumsfeld's appeasement theme.

After Cheney and Rumsfeld finished working over the appeasers, President Bush flew to Salt Lake City to tell Legionnaires that the poor souls who advocate a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq "are sincere and they're patriotic, but they could not be more wrong."

Bush said we would be fighting terrorists "in the streets of our own cities" if we withdrew from Iraq without victory. He didn't accuse his critics of appeasement, but the president suggested they fail to see the war as part of the larger struggle against terrorists he called the "successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century."

"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict," Bush said. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."

If Bush really believes the stakes in Iraq are as high as they were in World War II, he should mobilize the nation and call for sacrifice. He should institute a military draft and repeal tax cuts to pay for the long and costly struggle against Islamic terrorists. And he should replace Rumsfeld with a defense secretary who is competent in the business of waging war.

With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and a midterm election coming up, the Bush gang is still trafficking in fear, which is about all they have left. But polls show that a majority of Americans are on to their game. The public no longer believes the invasion of Iraq has made us safer or that it was related to the fight against terrorism. And they no longer trust Republicans more than Democrats to keep the nation safe. Even early supporters of the war now see Iraq for what it is - a colossal foreign policy blunder.

Rumsfeld told the veterans they should "feel each day as you did on Sept. 12, 2001." Maybe we would if the Bush administration had not embarked a disastrous course in Iraq. Now we are divided at home and hated abroad.

Bush has more than two years left in office. Can we be sure the worst is behind us? The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team is becoming increasingly desperate as Iraq continues its descent into hell, and I worry what they have in mind for Iran. The world is a more dangerous place because of the arrogance, ignorance and tragic incompetence of these men.

St. Pete Times

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Only too well, I'm afraid.

[Henia 11]

This is good post Steven, I almost missed it...