Posts archived in Election 2012
Okay. It is time to answer the big question once and for all.
….if it’s a plane full of mormons and a plane full of muslims, which do you feel safer boarding?
Answer:
Muslim. The plane is full of them. They don’t want to blow themselves up.
The Mormon plane, on the other hand, won’t be serving alcohol.
Portland Press Herald opinion writer M.D. Harmon is spending time today googling anything former President Bush said about the Taliban to try and somehow prove to the internets that Joe Biden was wrong to suggest that the Taliban was not our enemy. He is posting his results on AMG.
I would note that the Vice President was referring abstractly to the notion that we have to negotiate a peace with the Taliban because they are a big constituency in Afghanistan, whether we like it or not. This is reality. Reality has a well known Democratic bias, but it is what it is.
Of course, conservatives think reality should bend to them rather than the other way around. Only weak-kneed bleeding hearts let reality drive them into doing something they didn’t prefer from the get-go. And besides, anything mentioning the word “negotiate” or “compromise” is thoroughly un-Republican, so Mr. Harmon’s knee jerked out faster than you can say “lesser of two evils.”
Harmon found several quotes supposedly supporting his thesis, but the first he found, I thought, summed up President George W. Bush’s legacy and Republican reality-rejection quite nicely.
Here is how Mr. Harmon put it:
Found this in a 15-second search on Google on a site called RightWingQuotes: “And you all also may remember that early on, I said if you hide a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, if you provide comfort to a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorist. The Taliban now knows what we mean. They’re gone. And, guess what? People in Afghanistan don’t miss them one bit.” — George W. Bush rallies the troops in Alaska on 2/16/02″
The word enemy isn’t there, but the concept certainly is.
Ok. Great. Bush didn’t like the Taliban. No one does, excepting the people who actually live in Afghanistan outside of Kabul. We certainly shouldn’t take anything they think into account, right?
Isn’t it fitting that this quote is brought out to attack Biden but has a huge, gaping failure of understanding right smack in the middle of it?
If the Taliban were “gone,” as Bush said, we wouldn’t still be in Afghanistan! This wouldn’t be an issue and we could stop pouring money into another foreign country, bring our troops home, and rebuild America.
But it wasn’t true. It isn’t true. They were not gone then, and are not gone now.
Therefore, the Democratic administration must be the grown ups who accept reality and deal with the world as it is, not as it is imagined in the minds of the right-wing talk show hosts. And by “grown-ups” I mean only those people who abide by the very low standard that foreign policy isn’t all about unzipping your pants, smashing your dick on the table and saying “Isn’t it huge?”
Joe Biden, grown up, accepts the reality that some negotiations will help get us out of Afghanistan in the next ten years. Republican non-reality creates foreign policy based on myths, chest-thumping, and stupidity, leading to a bash on the other side for daring to suggest that we think about negotiating with the same bad guys their man theoretically eradicated nine long years ago.
If Republican theory were true, Afghanistan ought to be a utopia by now. After all they have no regulations, no liberal activist judges, and definitely no Taliban. Why are we still there?
The Taliban isn’t gone. Citing the guy who said they were gone nine years ago doesn’t make me think your side is good at foreign policy.
Imagine this:
You have come to believe that the President is a Marxist Muslim liar. He is not only evil, but so clever that he has managed to get elected by tens of millions of your fellow Americans despite his obvious satanic tendencies and continues to remain President despite his illegitimacy.
And now he is claiming credit for killing the single most hated enemy of America.
This is a problem. How does one maintain an image of Obama’s evilness alongside his decisive move to not only kill Bin Laden, but to do it in a way that provided proof of his death? And, not to mention, selflessly put his entire Presidency at risk?
Here is one way. Spread disgusting rumors that Obama didn’t actually give the order.
A small slice of the craziness:
When 48 hour go order issued, CoC was told, not requested. Administration scrambled to abort. That order was overruled. This order did not originate from CoC. …(Obama) complied, but did not originate.
Independent military contacts have confirmed. Stories corroborate one another.
The killing of Osama Bin Laden was in fact a Coup within Obama WH.
While John Frary writes hilariously bad fluff posts about the alleged hatred of Paul LePage (rather than, say, profound disagreement with his policies and actions) we have others on AMG saying plainly that Obama deserves no credit for the government’s action against Bin Laden because he literally had nothing to do with it. The “proof” is written by a birther theory proponent and sourced to unnamed “insiders.”
Hey, Frary, why not write indignantly about the vast array of falsehoods spread on your favorite website about the President?
Hey, Naran, why not spend your day correcting these allegations with the same fervor that drives you to challenge every Press Herald commentator who disagrees with the Governor?
Any website that let’s these sorts of things go unchallenged doesn’t even represent most of the Republican party, much less Maine.
AMG is a so fascinating because it is so unabashedly stupid. LarryB proves this with his assertion:
Seems the reports on Obama’s indecision in this matter are gaining traction…
http://www.thepostemail.com/2011/05/03/did-the-u-s-military-act-on-its-o…
The Post and Email? He seriously just sourced something called “The Post and Email” as proof this hogwash is “gaining traction.” Someone earlier in the thread at least sources the Daily Mail in the UK as evidence, which, although known as “The Daily Fail” in England due to its tabloid nature, is at least a real newspaper!
There is, of course, no mention of Obama being attacked during the 2008 election by his Republican opponent for saying that he would disregard borders and cross into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden if he got the chance. The brave and decisive Republican candidate declared that such a choice would be disrespectful to our great friends and allies, Pakistan, who after all are a sovereign country. Presumably McCain would have simply asked the Pakistani army to drive their jeeps over from the military base less than a mile away from Bin Laden’s not-so-hidden million dollar compound and politely ask him to go for a ride and work things out.
I wonder what would have happened then? I’m sure AMG would be praising McCain’s allegiance to international law.
Because AMG won’t, let me state what 80% of America is thinking right now: Thank you Mr. President.
Don’t mind the clowns. Keep doing your job.