Busted Bamboozability: Bush Has Lost The War On Terrorism

[DinahMoeHum]

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seery/busted-bambooz...

(snip)
George W. Bush, along with Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, played right into the terrorists' hands. Bush has acceded to the terrorists' fear mongering and in fact has become their accomplice (or dupe) in spreading and deepening their message of terror. The tragedy of 9/11 was indeed a wake-up call, a time of tremendous loss and grieving, but at the same time it should have been seen, in geo-strategic terms, as Osama bin Laden's sucker punch. Yet George Bush fell for it. Yes, take out the Taliban and their training camps. Yes, fight aggressively against the evil of terrorism. But, don't be gullible; don't overreact; don't lose your wits. Mostly, don't let the terrorists fundamentally alter our freedoms--and certainly don't dwell upon and exploit the very fears that they want to insinuate into our lives.

Let's face it: Osama bin Laden, holed up in his cave somewhere, must be laughing at us. He's calling the shots, and he really doesn't have to lift a finger. Why? George Bush is doing his bidding. His administration has suspended many civil liberties and deftly defied the U.S. Constitution. Junked the Geneva Convention. Tortured prisoners. Oversaw criminal acts at Abu Ghraib. Ignored due process at Guantanamo. Engaged in domestic spying without court supervision. Flushed billions down the toilet in Iraq. Weakened our military readiness. Set much of the world against us. The Middle East is now ablaze in terrorism. At home, we live constantly in "elevated fear" levels (whether color coded or not). Our internal politics have become poisonously divided, not united. Osama bin Laden is playing George Bush like a cheap fiddle.
(snip)
Bush and bin Laden have become a tag team. They may be bitter rivals, but theirs has become a symbiotic, mimetic rivalry. The problem is, Osama bin Laden has gained more than the upper hand. He's won, because George Bush has been playing this dangerous game on bin Laden's terms. It's time for the rest of us to call it like it is: George Bush has lost. He screwed up. Big time. Americans hate to lose, and the nation is starting to realize that we've been following a loser, not just a losing strategy. Rebuilding American freedom, confidence, and comity after this lost war will require a great deal of fortitude, dedication, and love.
(snip)

much more...

[mediaman007]

1. Leads one to wonder: Are they really bitter rivals?

Bush* needs bin Laden and bin Laden would never have accomplished as much without Bush*, Cheney* and Rumsfeld.

[Reckon]

2. Who wants to take away our freedom?

Who wants us to fear?

And who benefits?

[MissWaverly]

3. Didn't Osama say we would bankrupt ourselves

[krkaufman]

12. Symbiotic extremism is the real danger

Busted Bamboozability: Bush Has Lost The War On Terrorism

The article's author is amazingly on-point in many ways considering he's off on his main point.

bin Laden, al Qaeda, et al do not just want to instill fear in Americans and affect our internal relationships and discourse. Our fear and devolving political discourse are of no use to bin Laden if they do not contribute to his greater goals.

Roosevelt knew from which he spoke when he said,

"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Fear, itself, is just an emotion, but allowing our fear to consume us and override rational thought and reason can be our undoing, personally and nationally. bin Laden's end goal is not to simply make us frightened, but to affect our policy through our succumbing to fear.

bin Laden's simple goal is to bankrupt the United States, just as the mujahideen in Afghganistan helped hasten the downfall of the Soviet Union in the late 80s, and his well-known objective to this end was to provoke the United States into an extended war in a Middle Eastern country -- destabilizing the region, and turning Arabic, Islamic and international opinion against the US.

Most sadly, the world was with the US in its attempts to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, and "9/11" was widely agreed-upon as a major blunder by al Qaeda. al Qaeda was diminished in clout, recruiting and support shortly after 9/11, in early 2002. However, the Bush Administration and its neo-con policymakers used fear to subdue the American people into allowing an invasion of Iraq and have continued to leverage citizens' fear of terrorism to maintain power and to continue the occupation of Iraq. bin Laden has no need for further direct attacks in the United States, at present, due to Bush's continued policy of "stay the (bin Laden) course" in Iraq -- and the Bush Administration's own robust maintenance of the fear factor for their political gain.

Fear is simply the tool; the goal is bankrupting the United States. (And, yes, this last sentence applies equally to the symbiotic extremists on both sides of this "fight.")

[berni_mccoy]

4. The REPUBLICANS have SINGLE HANDEDLY LOST THE WAR ON TERROR

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/berni_mccoy/1...

[ktlyon]

5. Which ever side of this George is on, ours or bin Laden's

the game of war will always be a loser in this modern world. Attacking, bombing and killing innocent people will not make people play nice with you. We must give up the macho might makes right attitude.

[lyonn]

6. Many Americans lost their minds on 9-11

They allowed themselves to be scared by bush and his rhetoric of fear with every speech he made. We have been threatened by radical Muslims since at least the 1970s. What is really so different now from then? That should be what the democrats running for office should put out there for people to ponder. We need politicians that understand diplomacy not simply dropping bombs and spreading freedom (fear) around the world.

[MysteryToMyself]

19. America lost her mind because of 911

Since then she has had pychotic rages and attacks the wrong countries. She has went bankrupt seeking revenge. She spent billions of dollars and the terrorist win with a $1 bottle of alcohol/peroxide and a cell phone. Pitiful

[chat_noir]

7. bin Laden won another one in 2003 - we pulled out of Saudi Arabia

April 2003

US pulls out of Saudi Arabia

The United States has said that virtually all its troops, except some training personnel, are to be pulled out of Saudi Arabia.

snip

Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably Osama Bin Laden.

It is one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born dissident - blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks - to justify violence against the United States and its allies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm

Bushbots in those Yahoo political chat rooms hated to be reminded of this.

[fearthem]

8. Repugs trying to use plane bombing plot to their advantage, when...

it's their losing sight, inability to focus on the real fight, terrorism, instead of nation building in Iraq, which leaves us in their peril. Bush hasn't been fighting the correct fight!

[MtMan]

9. Let's Keep Huffington and Puffington as Far Out of the Democrat Party

Let's Keep Huffington and Puffington as Far Out of the Democrat Party as Possible.

Her half-witted analyses make easy targets, IMO.

[DinahMoeHum]

10. bye-bye, a-hole.

[Amonester]

11. "George Bush has lost. He screwed up. Big time."

Has anyone sane (thus knowledgeable enough) ever thought that this is what he was going to do since lil' lord pissypants always ran everything he touched to the ground all his life before?

[krkaufman]

15. Pretty much was the fear I had back in 2000 during the election.

He'd bankrupted every company he'd been near, so expected similar performance should he get into office.

The expediency with which he is bankrupting the country, politically and economically, is far beyond my expectations, though.

[krkaufman]

13. With what, in this opinion piece, do you disagree?

I disagree with a major premise of the article, as stated above, but nearly all of what the author says is dead-on. I just think the author fell short in labeling "fear" as bin Laden's ultimate goal.

(Note that the author is not "she" to whom you discourteously refer as "Huffington and Puffington.")

[MtMan]

16. The conclusion (is what I disagree with)

The conclusion is what I disagree with.

I havn't been around on this site long enough to have any opinion towards moe hum, the post looked entirely like a copy-paste of a huffington post alert. Which is OK.

I just personally do feel that Huffington is full of hot air, - well not everything she says, but some of what she says and also how she says it. That is why I refer to Huffington and her post as "Huffington and Puffington."

And I'm a tried and true Dem who has never voted for any other party candidate in my life.

So while I didn't bother to read the copy-paste of the hot air balloon alert in detail, now that you ask, I have read it just now, and I disagree with the conclusion. Huffington falls into the mindless trap at the conclusion of her hot air balloon that the Iraq war is part of the real war on terrorism. Which us Dems know of course that it is not. It is a personal war between the Bush family and the Hussein family, of which Geo wishes was over when he declared "mission accomplished" on the air craft carrier - yet we see the concerns of getting embroiled into a quagmire have come true, and while the military battle was a walk in the park, the vacuum post Saddam has created an Iraq that was much better off under Saddam.

As well, we will not lose the real war on terrorism. We will lose the Iraq War. Well if you include the exit strategy as part of the War which we should. The war on terrorism is not over. Dubya blundered big time by dropping the ball in the mountains of Afghanistan and allowing OBL and company to fall back to Pakistan and re-group, yes. But the war on terror is not over. Ultimately we can't lose. Even if Al Queda nukes us one day, we'd have no choice but to nuke all muslims on the planet, then the fallout would kill all living things on the planet, which would be a stalemate not a loss. We'd all be losers of the war on terror if it gets to that point.

So I am not worried about "losing" a war that really can't be lost. It really isn't much different from mutually assured destruction that we had with the soviet union. Save of course, the religious factor which we now have, and which is much less level headed than the cold war was.

I think we should go beyond the rhetoric and thinking, and realize, where there's smoke there's fire. We must be doing something wrong to have caused that much of a reaction in the terrorists. Many people think it is simply our foreign policies. So we need to change them. I'm sure the folks on this blog are on board with me with that conclusion.

[Demit]

17. The author of the piece is John Seery, not A. Huffington.

You don't seem to understand that the Huffington Post blog provides a venue for guest posters. And the post is indeed a "copy and paste" of an editorial (note that it is in the "Editorial and Other Articles" Forum)--that's a convention here on DU. So you have no need to have an opinion on the OP. The OP wasn't intending to pass off the article as his own, which is what you seem to be suggesting.

You can have any opinion you want on any thread here, but it's a good idea to have a basic idea of the mechanics of things.

[MtMan]

20. point taken

point taken - sorry for the flame bait. it was a knee-jerk reaction of mine as i just feel huffington comes across as awfully pretentious, and as a result an easy target for the right wing media assault.

[CJCRANE]

18. Good point.

The Iraq War is a sideshow and nothing to with a real "war on terror".

The next stage is to realize that B*sh never wanted a real war on terror. He had his sights on Iraq from the get-go. Stopping terrorism is irrelevent to him.

[MtMan]

21. yessir

yessir

plus we can't go around saying that Bush lost the war on terror, not only because the war isn't over, but because we need to tell the voters how we will wage the war on terror.

step 1. get the hell out of iraq
step 2. spend military funds instead of on iraq, on al queda

[MysteryToMyself]

22. Yes, we need to go beyond the rhetoric

Some people actually believe that the muslims just get up and put a bomb on, go to a market then set it off, killing people, just for the heck of it. That is how uninformed the media and government has kept people.

If a person says we need to get to the roots of the rage, then the media and Bushites ridicule whoever or whatever group that says it.

If people would research the history of Israel, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon they probably could put up an argument for change, but it would take strong, determined people that wouldn't fold under the pressure that would be put on them. There is a large amount of people vested in what is going on.

Most who ridicule getting to the roots of the problem, live behind gated neighorhood fences or have body guards. They won't pay for keeping the Middle East enraged, it will be you and me and our families.

[opihimoimoi]

14. Bush, the Wannabe Warrior is a ROOKIE, a NOOB, an AMATEUR

He and his Inept Team are Full of it...They wanna Dictate, Control, Rule....they think not for the COMMON GOOD...which is PEACE

They have revealed themselves to be SELF CENTERED and IGNORANT

[MysteryToMyself]

23. Bush is destroying our Freedom here

so he won't have to do it over there.

(Me bad, I read that joke on another blog.)

[grasswire]

24. read Harper's magazine this month

Lewis Lapham lays out the case that the only objective in Iraq for the Bushes was to make money for their cabal. In that, George W. Bush has triumphed magnificently. He has not lost anything, in his circle. By attacking Iraq, he has opened the coffers of the United States Treasury.