By Mr. Curmudgeon
The New York Times unwittingly scored points for Republicans on the terror issue in a recent editorial. “An election is coming,” the Times warned voters, “so Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists.” The dunder-heads at the Times made the point many Republicans have been hammering home since the underpants bomber was Mirandized and allowed to lawyer-up last Christmas Day. “Catching and punishing” enemy combatants is not a serious way to fight a war. Killing, interning and interrogating terrorists, or holding them for the duration of the conflict (even if it lasts one thousand years), is how serious leaders deal with enemies at war with the United States.
President Obama’s discredited Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, believes the objections to Obama’s coddling and trying of terrorists plays into Al Qaeda’s hands. “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall,” Brennan wrote in USATODAY. They may be small in stature, but that didn’t stop them from toppling New York’s 110-story Twin Towers. His charge raised the hackles of Republicans, some of whom demanded the president fire him.
Last August, in a speech delivered before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Brennan outlined the president’s strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda:
“Describing our efforts as a global war only plays into the warped narrative Al Qaeda propagates. It plays into the dangerous and misleading notion that the U.S. is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world. It risks setting our nation apart from the world rather than emphasizing the interests we share. And, perhaps most dangerously, portraying this as a global war reinforces the very image Al Qaeda wishes to project for itself: that it is a highly organized global entity capable of replacing sovereign nations with a global caliphate. And nothing could be further from the truth.”
It seems to be the perception of the president and his terror chief that antagonizing Al Qaeda antagonizes the world. To some extent, this may be true. But this is more an indictment of a twisted and evil world than it is of America. Brennan then suggests that Al Qaeda’s absurd goal to establish a global caliphate somehow minimizes the seriousness of its threat. Hitler’s aggression in Europe and the murder of six million Jews was predicated on the Nazi belief that Germans should rule the world by virtue their racial superiority. And that this superiority stemmed from an ancient bloodline stretching back to the mythical island of Atlantis. Vladimir Lenin believed Russia’s blood-soaked dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually morph into a utopian paradise. Will a nuclear weapon possessed by Iran be less threatening because President Ahmadinejad’s prays for a global apocalypse to hasten the arrival of Islam’s messianic 12th Imam? If anything, history shows that the crazier the ideology animating America's aggressive enemies, the greater the danger they pose.
The anti-terror strategy of this administration, then, is to move away from an aggressive war footing in favor of a change in America’s perceptions. Al Qaeda is no longer the spear point of totalitarian Islam. They are mere criminals to stand in judgment before the bar. And while we’re at it, let’s perceive they are Americans entitled to the protections of our Constitution. The attacks on 9/11 that killed 3,000 Americans are no longer acts of war. They’re “man caused disasters.” When an Al Qaeda terrorist breezes past airport security and boards an aircraft, which nearly results in the death of 300 passengers, the correct perception should be that “the system worked.” When some Republicans complain that perception is not reality, it’s just “unfounded fear-mongering” that “serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”
No wonder the New York Times fears voters might perceive “Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists.” That can only happen if voter perception is based on what they see around them and not perceptions spawned by deluded and crazy ideology. If fearful voters send Mr. Obama packing in 2012, he should not perceive it as a rejection by the American people; they just voted him former president for life. It is, after all, just a matter of perception.
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