After pondering and reading and pondering some more…It seems there is a real lesson to learn from the horror of Madrid. The knee-jerk one, of course, is that Terrorism works. At least that’s the one that al-Qaeda will take away, and the one that ought to terrify everyone. But that’s a lesson al-Qaeda already knows, in no small part, from the capitulation to Bin Laden demands that has already quietly occured when Bush pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Just as Osama requested on 9/12.
The real lesson is one for the Bush Administration. Though it may contain a bit more nuance than the true DittoHead believers are capable of understanding as I mentioned yesterday. They certainly won’t have this nuance explained to them by Lord and Savior Rush.
The lesson that the Bush Administration may or may not begin to understand is that the Conservatives in Spain were ousted by the people not for their stand on Iraq or their complicity with the Bush Administration, but because – in the face of the bombings and the impending elections – they lied to the electorate and expected the people to be dumb enough to fall for it.
The Spanish people are well aware of the type of attacks to expect from ETA (the Basque Terrorists that they have been dealing with for years), and they were smart enough to immediately recognize that the Train Bombings were most definitely not the work of ETA, but the work of al-Qaeda.
None the less, the Conservative Aznar government insisted on trying to sell the idea to the people that it was the work of ETA – a long-time opponent of the Aznar government.
The people knew better. The people didn’t appreciate being lied to for political purposes. And so the people removed the Aznar government.
It is that lesson which ought to be sending a chill through the Karl Rove Bunch right about now. But they’ve proven themselves willing to put their head in the sand before, so only time will tell if they will finally get it, or if they will continue on their current trajectory towards defeat this November by trying – as Aznar did – to obfuscate what the People are able to see quite clearly.
See the fascinating broken English letter to Tom Tomorrow from a Spanish voter for one inside account of what happened there last week.
On the homefront then, Bush needs to put the lesson learned into action immediately if he wants a chance of hanging onto Power this November (and we all know they want nothing more desperately than that).
They best heed the warnings coming from inside their very own base and come clean about their various and numerous failures in their mismanaged “War on Terror”.
As the excellent David Corn pointed out, the “Washington Post quoted a Senior CIA official last week as stating that thanks to the war in Iraq, the CIA ‘is stretched beyond their limits.'”
He goes on to point to more failures and misdirections currently being obfuscated by this Administration:
A few weeks ago, James Webb, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, made the same point more brutally: �Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.� Webb added, �The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.�
We know that Bush doesn’t much listen to the common folk (or bother reading their Newspapers), but if they wish to stop the hemorrhaging of their own base, not to mention the all-import “middle”, they may want to start coming clean on the only issue on which the American people are still barely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They need to begin telling the truth about their failures in the “War on Terror” and stop under-estimating the ability of the Electorate to smell a rat and turn insulted enough to hold them accountable for it at the next Election.
Otherwise, they risk missing the real lesson to be learned from Spain last week. I have no idea whether this bunch will “get it” or not. It would certainly be much better for the country if they did.
It seems to me that two groups Bush needs to worry about come election time are conservatives and pepole of faith.
I can’t think of one president in my lifetime who was more pro-Big Government than Bush. I guess Clinton was premature when he declared the era of Big Government over. Bush seems to believe that every aspect of our lives should be scrutinized and approved (or not) by the Federal government – he really meant it when he said, there ought to be limits on freedom.
Spending more, Much More, than you take in is very ANTI-conservative. And Bush loves to spend our money.
I can’t recall another president who opposed the consitutional separation of church and state. His faith based initiatives can make religious groups financially dependent on the Federal government.
As our Founding Fathers knew, whenever the line between church and state is erased, the state controls the church, not the other way around. Churches in this country should be very concerned about Bush’s smiling threat to their autonomy.
> Spending more, Much More, than you take in is very ANTI-conservative. And Bush loves to spend our money
I agree. However, we are spending so much money on education yet Democrats say it is not enough. Democrats complain about the defecit but they still want to spend more on everything.
Uh, Paul, clearly you’re not familiar with how the Budget actually works or is actually appropriately.
I’d recommend you take a look at this. It’s a cartoon, so you should be able to make some sense of it.
The liberal Ben of "Ben and Jerry’s" cartoon fails to mention the troops in Turkey, Japan, Germany, etc. We have troops in Bosnia and numerous other countries. And yet some liberals are now complaining that we are not giving enough money to the troops.
I do not think it is the US’s sole responsibility to wipe out poverty across the world. Evil and communist governments create poverty.
The amount of money spent on schools would be sufficient if it was managed properly. We also have an illegal alien problem. Throwing money at something is not always the fix.
I guess FACTS don’t interest you. Oh, well. Keep marching, soldier! It’s only your country you’re hurting.
Facts?
Ben is no authority on Federal Spending.
Right. Then perhaps you’ll just have to use this information instead. Directly from the US Budget Office.
You’ll quickly note the Defense Expenditures is that huge 18.8% slice in light blue. It may take a bit more time to find the tiny purple 3.8% slice that groups "Education, Employment and Social Services" all together. I guess if they had tried to show "Education" by itself, they wouldn’t have gotten it to even register on the graph!
Yes. Facts. Learn ’em every now and again. They are useful, and help keep you from looking like a fool.
Boy, that Social Security is a racket. Just over 100 million taxpayers and 50 million now have 401Ks. We should privatize it.
We have spent 5 trillion on the "War on Poverty" and the poorest kids in America are in the top 10% richest in the world.
The Defense budget needs to be large because the #1 goal of the government is to protect us from other countries/enemies. We "are" in a war right now.
The liberals always want to cut defense to fund social programs. They hate war and the military. I have many friends that work for business that supply bombs to the military. Cut that spending, and you have job lose. Then the liberals would complain about job lose.
We should all be thankful that George W. Bush is our president. The right man at the right time, just like Churchill, and he was thrown out of office by his own people.
Paul, I wrote a long and heated response to your finger-pointing, but I can’t even bring myself to post it.
You are a sad, blind man. I’m sure somewhere in there are thoughts beyond yourself, to the betterment of us all, but I am remiss to find them. I search for what exactly may be your point of view, as I respect our value systems are obviously different, but I see nothing that is helpful or enlightening.
This is the great divide, it’s you and me Paul. I agree that we disagree, and am okay that we do, but there must be some common ground or this country is lost. And it is lost Paul. I know your heart bleeds for all us sacrilegious liberals, but surely you must understand that besides your fundamental status quo, there is little better about this country now than there was four years ago.
And I don’t care if it was Clinton, or Bush, or Bush the first, I really don’t care. What I do care for are those around me, and that includes you too Paul. I am not short-sighted, and I am aware that there are many people living on this earth that don’t look like me, behave like me or value the things I value. I am also proud of that, and proud that I now have the means to connect with those people, for the common greatness of us all, and to learn from them.
However, I see nothing in your posts that offers anything of communion with those around you, or the betterment of our world, our country, our states or our citizens. There are many people that do without, and for us to hold onto such a large portion of the rock, simply because ‘might makes right,’ well, I guess that’s where we begin our line in the sand, eh?
I think there is plenty for everyone. I believe in the innate goodness of people, and societies, and I believe that overturning an entire government and its democratic ideals because a few rogue states or zealous factions have temporarily smacked our faces to be inappropriately small of us. It makes sense that the weaker/younger will attack the elder, but when the parent smacks the child who steps out of line, berates him, beats him, makes him feel smaller, lesser, then we are perpetuating the worst of what humanity can offer, the lowest form of ourselves, and the most fearful.
I pray for you, and hope that those who think like you begin to understand that there will be a world when we are gone, and drawing lines and borders doesn’t secure our safety, it merely stamps labels and judgments that our children will fight to remove, with their time and wasted energies. In the meantime, I will search for ways to improve not only my inner circles based on my beliefs, but look for ways to respect and value what other people believe and find peaceful and equal ways for us all to coexist.
Not sure what you are talking about. You gave no details as to what is wrong with our country or the world for that matter. You and Bradley rant but you give no answers or you don’t like the answers of others. I am still waiting for Brad to tell me what he would do on the War on Terror.
My replies are just to be the lone conservative on this barely read webpage.
And what is wrong with my comments like privatizing Social Security? What is wrong with our president defending this country? Why should we turn our foreign policy over to the UN? Why should Germany and France dictate what we do? Should the constitution be the rule of law?
My wife was in Saudi Arabia in 1980 and there was so much hate for us then, she was surprised more terrorism had not hit our shores before 911. I am not sure that liberals take terrorism seriously.
You need to list what are you major complaints and how to fix them. Then we can decide what we have in common or if I have any "thoughts beyond myself."
I also want to ask you a personal question. Were you raised Catholic? I am a Pro-Catholic Baptist. I just have this feeling…
Since you’re "not sure that liberals take terrorism seriously", I’d wonder where you get that impression? Especially since the #1 Counter-Terrorism Advisor for the last – oh, 15 or so years in America has said that Bill Clinton was far and away the most aggressive of all the Presidents he’s worked with (a total of the last 4) at facing the threat of Terrorism.
Unless you have a better inside source than he, I’m not sure where you get your opinions (that, obviously are simply "hopes" as opposed to opinions).
I suppose I should also add that Terrorist Attacks in the 30 months *since* 9/11 (when Bush woke up) have FAR outnumbered the Terrorist Attacks in the 30 months prior.
I should also add that a total of 35 Americans were killed by Terrorists during the entire 8 years of Bill Clinton. You can do the math on the American death toll since Dubya has ridden into to town.
911 was planned during the Clinton years.
Yup. And had the Bush Administration done what the Clinton Administration did when they saw the same signs (as they did prior to the Millenium), perhaps Bush could have stopped 9/11 the way Clinton stopped the Millenium Attacks.
But they were too obsessed with Iraq, Missile Defense and China. See today’s WaPo story on the major Foreign Policy speech that Condi had planned to give on Sept 11th. Those guys just missed the mark in every way. A complete failure.
> And had the Bush Administration done what the Clinton Administration did when they saw the same signs (as they did prior to the Millenium)
I always thought this was a strange comment because it was a border patrol lady who figured it out. Everyone worried about terrorism, the end of the world, Y2k, etc. Hysteria abounded! I know, I helped fix the Y2K bug and had to work at 6 AM on that day due to one little Y2K bug that I fixed in an hour. Janet Reno confirmed the border incident along with Dr. Rice.
When the "chatter" was as high then as it was prior to 9/11 the NSA – responsibly – lead a daily principles meeting wherein all agencies were present and cooperating.
Had Bush done same, the two known hijackers may have been tracked down before the 9/11 plot got off the ground.
The Clinton administration stopped numerous attacks as you’ve conveniently forgotten aside from the guy at the Canadian border. They also stopped concurrent attacks on the Holland and Lincoln tunnel’s and several other plots which I don’t have the inclination to looking for right now to describe to you, because you’ll just fall back to Rush polemics anyway no matter the evidence to the contrary.
Rice and Reno said "we got lucky" that one lady thought something was wrong. That had nothing to do with any NSA meeting. I know how rediculous, slow, and inept the government can be. I went up to the FAA and DOT in Kansas in 1995 and every cardreader on every door was broken. At my work, I have to go through 3 cardreaders and one is a finger scanner.