Friday, September 01, 2006
Editorial: The politics of fear and terror
Bush is wrong to suggest debating how to fight terrorism is defeatist.
From the RoundTable blog
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Critics of the Bush administration do not want to appease terrorists.
They do not want to cut off funding to U.S. troops on the battlefield.
They do not want to withdraw into a national cocoon and hope that when they poke their heads out, terrorists will have just gone away.
At least, responsible critics of the Bush administration do not want to do any of these things.
Responsible critics are those who are neither stupid nor suicidal, politically or literally. Among them are most Americans who now think a pre-emptive war on Iraq was a mistake, including most Democrats in Congress and a growing number of Republicans.
They look at what has been achieved, and what has not. And they look at what it has cost.
Responsible critics of the Bush administration want to fight terrorists, but disagree with some or all of the current strategy.
These critics don't want to abandon U.S. troops on a battlefield, but they also don't want to deploy them to any battlefield without the support to complete their mission and the plan that will bring them home.
These critics want to open the nation's eyes to a global jihad against the U.S. and the West and fight terrorists where necessary, but they also want to attack the root causes of terrorism.
The administration would have restive voters think otherwise.
President Bush embarked Thursday on a speaking tour of the country that coincides with this year's congressional election campaigns.
His speeches equate dissent over how his administration has conducted the war in Iraq with defeatism in the worldwide struggle against terrorism. It is a false equation.
His surrogates' claims have been even more outrageous. Vice President Cheney put words in the mouths of critics -- names unknown -- who supposedly think retreat in Iraq will end the threat to America.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared criticism of his error-filled conduct of the war to Europe's efforts to appease Nazi Germany before World War II. It is he, though, who is in denial.
Responsible critics don't want to placate Osama bin Laden. They want to defeat the radical Islamist movement he inspires.
In the five years since al-Qaida's attacks on the United States, the movement has metastasized.
So no one in this administration should be trying to silence those who question its strategy.
The answers, after all, are years overdue.
