Democrats and Terror

I was reading a right-wing columnist the other day, which is something I normally avoid, as the lack of logic found in these screeds usually makes we wish my head would explode so as to avoid the pain. I won't bother mentioning his name, because the fewer people that are exposed to his flights of fancy the better. I will say that his "thoughts" can be found on a regular basis in many daily papers. At any rate, the subject of this particular column was the writer's wish that the Democrats win in 2008. His logic being that if there was a Democratic President when the next terror attack occurs then the party would be forced to deal with the huge terrorist threat currently threatening to destroy our nation. Apparently Democrats both refuse to recognize the threat of terrorism and by extension refuse to take the steps necessary to deal with this looming danger.

I have yet to hear of a single Democratic leader say that terrorism is not a problem for this country. In fact, as someone who thinks the threat is overblown in order to terrify people into letting their freedom be taken away, I kind of wish they wouldn't harp on it so often. Be that as it may, the Democrats took the lead on creating the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11 Commission. It was the administration and by extension Republicans in Congress that blocked these moves until it was politically expedient to support them. Also, it was the Democrats that ran in 2006 on fully implementing the measures arrived at by the 9/11 Commission to protect us from the terrorists. That all sounds to me like a party that takes the terror threat seriously and is attempting to deal with it.

What this columnist is doing is setting up a false dichotomy between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of terror. He is conflating the war in Iraq with the war on terror. Since the Democrats have ceased to slavishly support the administration on their conduct of the war in Iraq, then they obviously are incapable of fighting terror. The problem is the logic is deeply flawed, the war in Iraq is one way of fighting terror, apparently by creating a bunch of terrorists far away in the hopes that they won't at the same time be able to hit us here. The fact that the terrorists were able to hit both Spain and Great Britain while operating in Iraq would seem to expose the flaw in this strategy, but apparently not for the administration and its partisans.

I do agree with the columnist in the respect that we both hope that a Democrat wins in 2008. I however hope this because maybe if we have a Democratic President when the next attack occurs, that person will take that opportunity to launch a massive effort to wean us off of oil altogether. Until we realize that the reason the terrorists hate us is because of our constant meddling in the affairs of the Middle East we will never be able to attack the problem at its root. The reason we have any interest at all in the political stability of that region is oil plain and simple. Remove the need for Middle Eastern oil and remove its significance to the United States and our allies. Once that is done they can be left alone to rule themselves however they see fit and their quarrel with us will be over.

The terrorists don't want to impose their belief system on us, they want us to stop imposing our belief system on them. Failing to recognize that fundamental problem is what led to the war in Iraq and it is what continues to hamstring the strategic thinking of the administration and our friend the columnist.