NYT: The Politics Of Fear

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/opinion/10wed1.html?ref=todayspaper

The Politics of Fear

Published: February 9, 2010


An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists.

It’s nonsense, of course, but effective. The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at Americans’ rights. He used it to get re-elected in 2004. Now the Republicans are playing the fear card for the fall elections.

The most recent target is the Obama administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bomber, particularly its decision (an absolutely correct one) to have the F.B.I. arrest and interrogate the suspect and file federal terrorism charges rather than throw him into a military prison where the Republicans seem to expect that he would be given no rights, questioned and held without charges.

snip//

Republicans like to say that Mr. Obama is giving new rights to terrorists. But Mr. Holder’s letter noted that the Bush administration prosecuted more than 300 people on terrorism-related charges in federal courts without a whiff of complaint from those same Republicans. He said those included Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber; Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks; the man charged with plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge; and another who schemed to bomb the Los Angeles airport.

The Republican propaganda is a distraction from the real issue: that the counterterrorism system is malfunctioning more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Like many of the nation’s other problems, Mr. Obama inherited this one. For eight years, Congress failed in its legal duty to oversee the intelligence community and the basic operational tasks of the Department of Homeland Security and correct the abusive system of detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere that made our country more vulnerable, not less.

Congress should be helping the president fix those problems, not piling up sound bites for November and trying to bring that shameful detention system home.

[rasputin1952]

1. All the R's have is fear...

they don't even do that well. They have overused the ad hominem attacks so often, they no longer have the "desired" effect of scaring the bejeezus out of the citizenry any more.

I'm not kidding about this...after 9-11, out here in the hinterland of NE, a farmer kept a rifle and shotgun in his combine while out taking down the corn/soy. On at least one occasion, he fired off the rifle at a "turban", which turned out to be a plastic bag that was caught on a cornstalk. I'm not making this up! The only reason anyone knew of this embarrassing situation is that the round passed through the rear window of a car well over a half mile away traveling on a State Road, missing a child in a car seat by inches. The moron in this situation had been listening to RW radio at the time, and said he, "was going to protect America". He never thought about explaining just how "Arabs", (his description), got into his field in the North Central part of Nebraska...(a prime target I suppose...:eyes: ).

Fear is a powerful motivator...usually, innocent victims of "action" are high in number...people don't think when they are scared.

(BTW, the farmer was charged with discharging a firearm across a road, which had a fine of $500 + Court costs, and he was put on probation for 6 months).