What the terrorist scare means (or doesn't)

[lukpac]

Bolding mine. More at the link.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/ ... index.html

The White House is sure to follow suit any minute now, insinuating -- or explicitly claiming -- that this incident proves that Bush was right about the whole array of our country's foreign policy disputes, from Iraq to the current Israel-Lebanon war. This naked exploitation of terrorist threats for political gain occurs every time a new terrorist plot is revealed, no matter how serious or frivolous, no matter how advanced or preliminary, the plot might be. Each time a new plot is disclosed, administration officials and their followers immediately begin squeezing the emotions and fears generated by such events for every last drop of political gain they can manufacture.

But this effort is as incoherent as it is manipulative. Nobody doubts that there are Muslim extremists who would like to commit acts of violence against the U.S. and the West. No political disputes are premised on a conflict over whether terrorism exists or whether it ought to be taken seriously. As a result, events such as this that reveal what everyone already knows -- that there is such a thing as Islamic extremists who want to commit terrorist acts against the U.S. -- do nothing to inform or resolve political debates over the Bush administration's militaristic foreign policy or its radical lawlessness at home.

Opposition to the war in Iraq, for instance, is not based upon the premise that there is no terrorist threat. It is based on the premise that that invasion undermines, rather than strengthens, our campaign to fight terrorism.

Invading and bombing Muslim countries do not prevent terrorism or diminish the likelihood that British-born Muslims will blow up American airplanes. If anything, warmongering in the Middle East exacerbates that risk by radicalizing more and more Muslims and increasing anti-U.S. resentment. And the more military and intelligence resources we are forced to pour into waging wars against countries that have not attacked us, the less able we are to track and combat al-Qaida and the other terrorist groups that actually seek to harm us. There are few things that have more enabled terrorism than turning Iraq into a chaotic caldron of anarchy and violence -- exactly the environment in which al-Qaida thrives.

[krabapple]

The current Repub/Lieberman mantra is that getting out of Iraq before George Bush wants to, signals the terr'ists tbhat we;'re weak, hence they will increase attacks on America.

This strikes me as a limited chain of reasoning. I would like someone to ask them: do you think it will increase them more than staying in Iraq would? On what evidence?

I suspect the only leg to stand on there is the idea that Islamofascists will be emboldened to assert power *overseas* . Then again, not gaining control of the situations *overseas* has that effect, too. So does fostering democratic elections where the winners are...Islamic theocrats. They only need to sign on to democracy once, after all.

Wouldn't it be best to try to get a real coalition together again, to at least share the blame for the likely failure of such ventures?

[Rspaight]

Six years of Bush rule has brought us to the point where we will have sigificant terror threats for the foreseeable future no matter *what* we do. The window of opportunity to mount a real global anti-terror effort was right after 9/11, when the whole world was *begging* to help us crush al-Qaeda, and Bush instead decided to invade Iraq.

Ryan