By Mr. Curmudgeon
For the party in power, fighting the war on terror has not proved one of their strong suits. Unwilling to adopt a muscular approach in dealing with Islamic crazies determined to kill us, vulnerable Democrats have hit on a novel approach to combat Republican opponents this election season – go back to school. “To combat the problem,” reports POLITICO.com, “House Democrats have asked Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, and California Rep. Jane Harman, a leader on intelligence issues in the House, to help lead training session on the issue.” Translation: when you can’t argue the facts, hire advertising hucksters to help spin your way out of trouble.
It will be interesting how Democrats spin granting enemy combatants Constitutional rights and criminal trails. We never did this for Japanese and German prisoners of war. So, what makes Gitmo jihadists so special?
Rep. Gerry Connolly told POLITICO, Democrats have to “avoid the trap of looking soft and weak.” Connolly believes strength in the face of suicidal mass murders is all in the way Democrats construct their sentences, “There are strong adverbs, adjectives and verbs as opposed to weak.” He offers this example: “I’m going to fight for American interests abroad,” and not “I’m going to defend American values.” “Not that one is better than the other, but in language, one is more assertive and one’s stronger. That’s where we need to be. Words matter.”
As voters, we need to ask ourselves this question: what keeps Osama bin Laden up at night? The thought of U.S. Daisy Cutters exploding over his Al Qaeda bat cave or Rep. Connolly’s “strong adverbs, adjectives and verbs?” As Dick Cheney said, “I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it.” Democratic demagogy may trip up the occasional tongue-tied Republican, but will do nothing to stop jihadist suicide bombers from unleashing hell on American soil. Sticks and stones and Predator drones may break their bones, but words will never hurt them.
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