Salon's front-page subhead for Glenn Greenwalds's mid-week post after the underpants bomb scare, "Craving melodrama", put it perfectly:
The calls for Obama to act with more hysteria and panic every time Al Qaeda sneezes are just plain stupid
The immediate tactical purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. And every government everywhere in the world understands this. Responsible governments therefore act to minimize the spread of fear and panic. This is the only play that counters the terrorists' intent. Only governments who welcome expanded control over a frightened citizenry fan the flames of fear that the terrorists set. Such governments are in de facto collusion with the terrorists who attack their citizens, whether consciously or not.
So, tactically, Obama understands how to combat terrorism and is interested in doing so, while the GOP, still following the Bush/Cheney line, continues colluding with the terrorists, consciously or not.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes. Strategically, there is virtually no difference between Obama and the GOP. And that's why we're in big, big trouble.
If the immediate tactical purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, the strategic purpose is to initiate a cycle of attacks and disproportionate responses that increasingly angers the terrorists' intended constituency significantly more than the attacks themselves, gradually moving them from near-pariah status to the political vanguard. This is precisely what al Qaeda has done, first with modest success under Clinton, then with spectacular success under Bush, and now apparently with just as much success under Obama. |
Dick Cheney's attacks on Obama were particularly instructive, since they are 100% wrong, and thus serve as a perfect reflection on the Looking Glass World of Versailles, and how they are taking us all to Hell in handbasket:
As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war.
"He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, 'war on terror,' we won't be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe. Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency - social transformation - the restructuring of American society. President Obama's first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."
The problem, of course, is the exact opposite of what Cheney alleges. True, Obama has altered the cosmetics. It's no longer called the "war on terror", but Obama is every bit as committed to the "long-war" worldview as George W. Bush was, He's escalated the war in Afghanistan twice this year, and now has us fighting in Yemen and Somalia as well. That's reality. Hundreds of billions for the de-branded war on terror, and next to nothing for the slowly self-destructing domestic economy. Cheney's fears about Obama purported goal of "social transformation" are about as reality-based as his knowledge of Sadam's WMDs. And just like those hallucinatory WMDs, those imaginary fears loom far too large in the collective mind of the American media as well.
Indeed, Bush and Obama's state positions on closing Guantanamo and withdrawing from Iraq were virtually identical. There's a bigger chasm here between Bush and Cheney than there is between Bush and Obama. And that's a very bad thing that should trouble us all. Instead, it's virtually unnoticed. Obama's cosmetics--aided and abetted by Cheney's sideshow histrionics--serve to distract us from this fundamental fact: the continuity of strategic stupidity from Bush to Obama.
Consider Afghanistan. It's recently been revealed that--surprise! surprise!--we really can't pull a rabbit out of a hat in Afghanistan, because, it turns out, Afghanistan doesn't have any hats.
This is not news. It's the whole reason we thought we were so clever luring the Soviets into Afganistan in the first place back in 1979: Afghanistan cannot be conquered, it can only make you look bad.
Really, really, really, really, make-Osama-bin-Laden-look-great-by-comparison bad. And that's what we're doing now. Bombing civilians, killing women and children, making Osama bin Laden look great by comparison--and making him look right when he says, "They are fighting a war against Islam, and I am defending Islam."
When what you're doing makes a liar like Osama bin Laden look like he's telling the truth, that's a sure sign that what you're doing is wrong. And not just a crime, but a blunder.
It's fashionable nowadays to say, "Well, what did you expect. After all, Obama said that Iraq was the wrong war, which is why he opposed it, and that Afghanistan is where he wanted to shift the focus." Any progressives who didn't pay attention to this were simply just fooling themselves, we've been told.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps they simply thought that Obama couldn't possibly be that stupid, and he was just making noise during the campaign to seem tough. Because, really, what Obama's doing now in Afgthanistan--falling for the same illusion that the Soviets fell for in 1979--is the kind of stupid that folks just didn't see anywhere in his presidential campaign. It's the kind of stupid that people somehow thought he was incapable of.
Of course, they were wrong. That much is obvious now. It's the same kind of stupid we've seen with his backing of the Wall Street Pirates, and his save-the-insurance-companies approach to "health care reform." It's now quite obvious he's got bottomless reserves of that kind of stupid. But in 2007 and 2008 people really didn't see that coming. Even those of us who weren't enchanted with him.
This is Alfred E. Newman stupid. It is George W. Bush stupid, with a coat of Richard Nixon paint. |
