People have wanted to destroy America long before al Qaeda came along. That doesn't make Islamic hoodlums into a threat to America on anywhere near the same scale as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
And yet Bush and the Republicans have cynically exploited criminal activity of marginal characters in what was once called the "third world" and elevated a lunatic like Osama bin Laden into a world-class "enemy" on par with the United States. Without America's focused attention, bin Laden was a marginal nothing who got "lucky" on 9/11 but has no military strength and, before Bush over-reacted, little influence in the Middle East.
But Bush fell for the bait. In doing so, Bush attacked not only al Qaeda but the secular, anti-Islamic state of Iraq. Why? I'm sure we'll keep peeling that onion for years to come, but it's pretty clear that he tried to parlay on the hysteria he whipped up.
Now you argue that fear is a virtue. That strikes me as very un-American, Bob. Fear makes you do stupid things. Fear makes you timid. Fear makes you make mistakes.
And fear is not an American tradition. If we had politicians trying to cash in on fear, we wouldn't have had the American Revolution.
There were a couple of other famous politicians who cashed in on fear in the 20th century, and it's so kind of you to bring one of them up. Hitler was one. He really whipped up fears in Germany that the world was out to get them so they had to get the world first. Then of course Stalin was a maestro of fear. In fact, the entire Soviet foreign policy was largely based on fear.
Is Bush a Hitler? Hardly. He'd have to kill tens of millions of people, and as bloody as his hands are, he's well below an order of magnitude smaller in his impact. And his attempts to remake the Constitution to fit his own personal vision of what he sees as his God-given destiny are indeed frightening, though being afraid of jack boots in America won't stop them from appearing.
And just because Bush isn't Hitler doesn't make fear a virtue.
It's time we stopped being afraid as a nation and started getting smart about how we lead the world. Otherwise every nutjob lunatic with a bomb out there is going to whipsaw our nation everywhere but where our national interest lies.
People have wanted to destroy America long before al Qaeda came along. That doesn't make Islamic hoodlums into a threat to America on anywhere near the same scale as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
And yet Bush and the Republicans have cynically exploited criminal activity of marginal characters in what was once called the "third world" and elevated a lunatic like Osama bin Laden into a world-class "enemy" on par with the United States. Without America's focused attention, bin Laden was a marginal nothing who got "lucky" on 9/11 but has no military strength and, before Bush over-reacted, little influence in the Middle East.
But Bush fell for the bait. In doing so, Bush attacked not only al Qaeda but the secular, anti-Islamic state of Iraq. Why? I'm sure we'll keep peeling that onion for years to come, but it's pretty clear that he tried to parlay on the hysteria he whipped up.
Now you argue that fear is a virtue. That strikes me as very un-American, Bob. Fear makes you do stupid things. Fear makes you timid. Fear makes you make mistakes.
And fear is not an American tradition. If we had politicians trying to cash in on fear, we wouldn't have had the American Revolution.
There were a couple of other famous politicians who cashed in on fear in the 20th century, and it's so kind of you to bring one of them up. Hitler was one. He really whipped up fears in Germany that the world was out to get them so they had to get the world first. Then of course Stalin was a maestro of fear. In fact, the entire Soviet foreign policy was largely based on fear.
Is Bush a Hitler? Hardly. He'd have to kill tens of millions of people, and as bloody as his hands are, he's well below an order of magnitude smaller in his impact. And his attempts to remake the Constitution to fit his own personal vision of what he sees as his God-given destiny are indeed frightening, though being afraid of jack boots in America won't stop them from appearing.
And just because Bush isn't Hitler doesn't make fear a virtue.
It's time we stopped being afraid as a nation and started getting smart about how we lead the world. Otherwise every nutjob lunatic with a bomb out there is going to whipsaw our nation everywhere but where our national interest lies.