Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald wrote another insightful column, this time about how the MSM is drooling over the upcoming entrance into the presidential campaign of Fred Thompson. He painstakingly documents the usual suspects in the MSM pushing how "tough" Fred Thompson is, despite the fact that he has nothing in his life experience that actually demonstrates any toughness. This is a trend that I am frankly really sick of. I am tired of Democrats who did wear the uniform being taunted and painted as weak, while a parade of chickenhawks who pretend to be tough, get all of the praise. We can talk ad nauseum what is wrong with the media, but I am here to argue that we have an opening to obliterate these notions, if we just have the nerve to hit the GOP where they're strongest: terrorism.
Two devastating articles have come out in the last week demonstrating how much Iraq has helped al Qaeda, its sister group Al Qaeda in Iraq, and al Qaeda franchises all over the world. But it's not enough to read the LA Times or the NY Times and put up a blog post pointing them out. Instead, we need Democrats in the Congress and presidential candidates alike, to get on TV and start attacking Bush and the GOP in their weakening of our national security with their ill begotten Iraq adventure. First, let's turn to the New York Times:
Militants Widen Reach as Terror Seeps Out of IraqThe Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.
Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.
Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.
Why haven't the Dems been pounding this story over and over again ever since it published on May 28th? This absolutely obliterates the "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here" argument. For good. Who will step up to the plate and in plain language repeat over and over again that Iraq has weakened our hand so substantially, that we now have a whole new crop of fighters who didn't exist before? And how the continued presense of our troops in Iraq will increase the flow of new recruits?
To add to the demoralizing story in the NY Times, there is another one in the LA Times relating to the financing of the old Al Qaeda network in Pakistan -- you know the one who hatched a plan to kill 3,000 of our people on 9/11? The same 9/11 Bush and the Republicans continue to trumpet as their issue, and for which Guiliani is using to cover up the fact that he has no national security experience nor can be bothered to find out what the difference is between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites?
Read on:
Influx of Al Qaeda, money into Pakistan is seenWASHINGTON - A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.
In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.
Al Qaeda's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding.
Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.
So not only has Iraq created a new Al Qaeda network, it has been so successful in fundraising in Iraq that it is rebuilding the old network which Bush failed to decimate when he outsourced capturing Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora to duplicitous warlords, and withdrew troops from Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. This is criminal negligence!!! Why isn't anyone screaming about this?
Nearly everyone was dispirited last week over the Iraq "compromise" bill, but we need a real public relations plan to make sure next time, we win and don't allow this Iraq War to continue open ended. So how do we do that? We frame the debate. As much as the immorality of the war resonates with us and a great deal of Americans, we need to make the case that ending the occupation of Iraq is vital to our national security. If we succeed with that argument, it will be the final tipping point that will get both the cocktail circuit in DC to go along with us and allow Americans to get fully on board to the prospects of getting out of Iraq. Because many people, despite being very upset about the war and the carnage it has wrought, are very worried about al Qaeda striking if we leave Iraq. The data does not back this fear up. Quite the opposite. The occupation is what is driving the increased strength of al Qaeda, because al Qaeda has been winning the propaganda war.
I think it is important to analyze how al Qaeda recruits new fighters, and it is clear from Osama bin Laden's 1996 fatwa, that Americans occupying Middle Eastern lands is #1 on his list. He devotes one paragraph to Reagan's pullout of Lebanon following a terrorist attack and one paragraph to Clinton's pullout of Somalia, yet devotes endless text on the continued U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia. This is not about "listening to him" or "doing as he says" but getting the politics and the P.R. that made his words resonate with disaffected Muslim men. Clearly, occupying Middle Eastern lands in a blunt and blatant way leads to new jihadists. Soft approaches to helping countries while continuing a light touch counterterrorism operation (as Kerry said in '04 -- intelligence gathering and law endorcement) can not as easily be manipulated for recruiting purposes. Another words, if we leave Iraq, there will be one gloating paragraph about how we left, but that simply will not be enough to inspire people to join up. In effect, leaving Iraq will dry up recruitment to al Qaeda. It will also dry up a huge portion of the funds they have been receiving from people angry at the American occupation. And, finally, we need to end torture and go back to our ideals of followng the Geneva Conventions as they were written after World War II.
Jon Stoltz, of Vote Vets, talks in the way I wish all Democrats would talk. He specifically addresses that the continued involvement in Iraq is enabling al Qaeda, especially when Bush says we'll be there for a long, long time. Watch the video here.
This is my rallying cry to Democrats -- hit the GOP where it hurts as our argument to get out of Iraq. And start now, so come that "magical day in September", they will have laid the groundwork to forcing the president and Republicans in Congress to changing course in Iraq.
But what I'm more troubled by, is how afraid (I just don't know any other word to use) the Democrats have been to speak up forcefully against the Republicans and "hit them where it hurts". For years and years the Republicans have touted their superiority in defense measures. Well, there is a host of recent Republican history that destroys that fabrication. Truth is that they lied us into a useless war, fought this war with neither a plan nor strategy, did not properly arm the soldiers in harms way, ignores the health needs of the returning soldiers and veterans, didn't have the sense to protect our borders after 911, didn't have the sense to protect the Iraqi borders after the Iraq invasion, and has left the rest of the world believing that we can't be trusted.
The Republicans don't skip a beat in whacking the Democrats with any convenient lie. And what do we do....go silent...when the majority of the country supports us !!!
What possibly could be going through their heads?
But it really doesn't come down to one person. It comes down to the party working more in tandem to drive these talking points home. I don't mean to be in full lock step like the GOP is, but there have been moments when Democrats banded together (like against privatizing SS, they were a very effective team), and I think this should be one of them.