Even "anti-war" Repubs just spin, spin, spin

[lwcon]

On All Things Considered, Judd Gregg (R-NH) takes two grudging nano-steps toward opposing the war... and one or two back.

Gregg boldly suggests that we implement some of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations — seven surgalicious months of death and chaos after the vaunted report's release.

He says some appropriate "Class of 2007" things, like "...the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't seem to exist."

But get yourself a cooler and lay yourself low, 'cause it's the same old song and dance:

The bottom line here, of course, for most Republicans I suspect, is the view that I have and many others have, which is that this is a war about protecting America's interests, in fighting a terrorist threat that basically wants to do us fundamental harm. These folks still want to attack us, and they want to kill us, and they bring the war here to America. And one of the best ways to fight them is to find them where they are, rather than have them come here and find us. But clearly the progress in Iraq is not good, and there has to be some way of bringing closure to that undertaking, so that we aren't continuing to put troops in harm's way in a situation which doesn't seem to be resolvable.

After finessing the obvious question — how this supposed risk jibes with his cut-and-run plan — he returns to singing from the hymnal:

That doesn't mean you ignore the fact that also within Iraq there is a clear Al-Qaeda presence, and they intend to use Iraq as a staging area for developing more attacks in the future against us as a nation here in the United States...

Of course, there was another obvious question that should have been asked: in what way is "this is a war about protecting America's interests, in fighting a terrorist threat that basically wants to do us fundamental harm"?

I'm just a simple unfrozen caveman blogger, but I still can't quite figure how turning a hemmed-in secular dictatorship into a recruiting center for Al-Qaeda wannabes protects our interests. I'm stupid that way.

And then there's the other-other obvious question: what's with this continued bullshit about them "finding us here" or "following us home"?

You know, other invaders have figured this out. It's not hard: "Turn left at Greenland."

Finally, there's the other-other-other obvious question — perhaps the most obvious of all: why does Judd presume that there's a fixed number of terrorists who want to come and kill us, and that we can root them out and be safe from domestic attacks? How is it that he hasn't noticed that there didn't used to be anti-American terrorists in Iraq... before we started bombing the shit out of them? How is it that a United States Senator has no clue whatsoever about asymmetric warfare or about human nature in occupied territories? Just wonderin'.


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