Safe, safer and safest
By Miguel Guanipa (09/29/06)
There were few temperate hearts to be found among the media who dared to postpone any further judgment until a more substantive portion of the report leaked a few days ago received some well deserved scrutiny. In short, it was a veritable Bush bashing slugfest.
The report in question titled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, contained national intelligence estimates from 16 intelligence agencies that were made available to the president and senior members of the congressional intelligence committees, one of which (or maybe more) is obviously a mole.
Congressional officials said that “neither the House nor the Senate Intelligence Committees had been formally briefed on the report” shortly after Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Edward Kennedy had drafted scurrilous statements emphasizing the lack of vindication offered therein for the President’s policy on the Iraq war.
Like the listless heathen who stops listening after the 8th verse in the Sermon on the Mount, Democrats and the media were reluctant to lend coverage to further passages in the report which seemed to highlight the perilous consequences of their proposed course of action and focused primarily on the one excerpt exposing the alleged shortcomings of the president’s “stay the course” rhetoric.
The New York Times diligently posted one extract of the entire document that lined up adventitiously with the paper’s ongoing negative opinion of the war and simultaneously extinguished any impulse to infer a personal animus against the current administration on their part; after all, they were just reporting the facts.
According to some high ranking Democrats the report contradicts the president’s s thesis that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism. But they forget that it is not only the President but Bin Laden himself who has advanced this premise. At the same time democrats indicate the report supports their own claims that Iraq has provided fresh training grounds for future terrorists, which would appear to be at variance with their previous argument; if it is not the central front on terrorism why are terrorists so solicitously convening in that region?
The report also gave the Democrats an opportunity to reiterate their commitment to offer “a new direction”, which only serves as an unwelcome reminder to Republicans and Democrats alike who are anticipating with bated breath to hear what this “new direction” actually is. They also seem blissfully unaware of the logical inconsistencies inherent in this somewhat disjointed motion that has become their battle cry. Taking a turn on a road in which you are presumably lost without knowing exactly where that new road is headed leaves you pretty much in the same predicament: lost. Thus the democrats have yet to coherently articulate what that “new direction” means; a minor detail in what is a very catchy phrase by all accounts.
It is hard to say who this report will benefit the most. If Democrats parade it as proof of the credibility problem plaguing the current administration they should be careful not to overreach by ignoring that the same report highlights a more aggressive response to the growing problem of terror is required. This kind of reaction is diametrically opposed to today’s democratic mindset which is perennially fixed in appeasement mode when dealing with conflict.
Terrorism experts will probably agree that when the terrorists’ way of life is threatened they will do everything in their power to expand their operations for the sake of their own survival. It may be difficult to gage if this is only a temporary peak in operations due to their urgent need to still appear to have some relevance in the midst of a relentless annihilation campaign. And the fact that their numbers have only increased - as democrats lament - is arguably more the reason to step up the efforts to rid the world of them.
The challenge Democrats have to answer to is how a problem of terrorism which goes back centuries can be ameliorated by a 3 and ½ year campaign. Perhaps-as the democrats suggest-we should stop and see if it helps fix the problem.
It is also worth pondering if it is the war as much as the way in which the media reports it that has inflamed Islamist passions around the world; after all, all a Jihadist has to do in order to pump himself up is go to the CNN website and view the Abu Ghraib picture gallery of his humiliated comrades.
By far the most enlightening words in a sea of nonsense were uttered by National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, whose office prepared the report. In his own words "the conclusions of the intelligence community are designed to be comprehensive, and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."
This is bound to enflame the passions of at least two thirds of the reporters at the New York Times. How dare he imply that reputable news organizations would twist the entire report on the basis of one statement wrenched from its original context simply because it happens to reflect their own personal bias?
But not unlike their peers in the insulated world that most liberals live in, Democrats refuse to exercise the linear thinking that would help them avoid the starry-eyed approach to the present conflict which they continue to tout as the better alternative. They insist in ignoring the fact that we can only claim to be “safe” for as long as we are not attacked again; but we can not remain in that state if we stop or diminish our offensive against the terrorists in the very soil where they are bred.
Hence the war in Iraq will have to continue until a stable government and security forces are fully established that can combat this evil on their own. Naturally Iraqis will not be able to achieve this goal unless we help them; but how can we help them if we withdraw?
Why is it then that Democrats see this as a responsible course of action at this juncture?
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