Hoping for Terror

Charlie Black's statement that "certainly it would be a big advantage to" John McCain for American civilians to be slaughtered by international terrorists helps bring to the surface the central paradox of our times. How reasonable is it to trust that a political movement will bring safety to the country when they themselves believe that doing so would ill-serve their interests? Insofar as representative democracy works as a system of government, the general idea is that politicians expect to be rewarded for good stuff happening and punished for bad stuff happening, and thus make some effort to try to see that good stuff rather than bad stuff happens. The post-9/11 GOP upends that relationship, and you repeatedly see instances of conservatives openly yearning for disaster to strike on the theory that that'll show the liberals or boost Republican electoral fortunes.

Meanwhile, if I were Barack Obama I'd be trying to think of a plan to counter the fact that not only does al-Qaeda scaring people serve GOP interests, but Republicans keeping power also serves al-Qaeda's interest in pushing the West into conflict with a broader circle of Muslims. According to Ron Suskind, the CIA's view was that bin Laden released a tape shortly before the 2004 election specifically in order to boost George W. Bush's re-election fortunes and there's no particular reason to think that that sort of tactic won't come back into play.

Comments

It also works the other way with (D) and Liberals hoping that Iraq stays a mess to win political points.

Posted by Whoa Now | June 24, 2008 10:15 AM

Yeah, it does make one wonder: why exactly did Osama bin Laden "escape" into Pakistan? Why did American planes systematically bomb in front of the cave complex at Tora Bora, killing many civilians, but did not bomb any of the routes going from the cave system through the mountains into Pakistan, because they were afraid of bombing "shepherds" - this, for a route that snaked along at 9.000 feet in the dead of winter. Even though, of course, drones taking heat readings recorded fires - camping fires.

It is hard to signal an intent not to capture or kill the leader of al qaeda more without taking out an advertisement.

Posted by roger | June 24, 2008 10:16 AM

It also works the other way with (D) and Liberals hoping that Iraq stays a mess to win political points.

Posted by Whoa Now | June 24, 2008 10:17 AM

It also works the other way with (D) and Liberals hoping that Iraq stays a mess to win political points.

You fail to grasp Matt's point. In a democracy, the opposition party tends to stand to benefit if the party in power falters. Thus the incentiveis to point out the failures of the party in power and try not to fail yourself when you do get into power less your opposition do the same to you.

But in the case of terorism, we have a the Party in power believing it will benefit from its own failures. This is a perversion of the perceived benefits of democracy and is unlikely to lead to good governance.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 24, 2008 10:22 AM

Charlie Black was just being too honest, which isn't a GOP virtue. The GOP wants the benefits of fear primarily since they think that once again fear is their friend in elections. Maybe they are correct, they certainly are Right.

This is one of those 'some of the people, some of the time' things. The GOP only needs to influence about 10% of the electorate to ignore the GOP record of 'accomplishments' in the last eight years and stay with them, and they win. Hence...

Lies and Fear. Your modern day GOP. "Is that all there is?" Yep.

Next: Why will they swiftboat again this year? Same reasoning. Lies work, for some of the people, some of the time.

Apparently the Bush/McCain insiders have realized that attacking Iran BEFORE the elections won't work this time, so now the plan is to attack AFTER the elections but before the inauguration to make sure the Dems have another hopeless entanglement to accompany Iraq, the US economy, and a non-functional US Government. Such a legacy!

Posted by JimPortlandOR | June 24, 2008 10:27 AM

Whoa Now,

No Iraq is mess because of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence. And that my friend lays at the feet of Bush and McCain.

Posted by Micheline | June 24, 2008 10:29 AM

Whoa Now,

No Iraq is mess because of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence. And that my friend lays at the feet of Bush and McCain.

Posted by Micheline | June 24, 2008 10:30 AM

Whoa Now,

No Iraq is a mess because of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence. And that my friend lays at the feet of Bush and McCain.

Posted by Micheline | June 24, 2008 10:30 AM

Sorry for the multiple posts. Something really needs to be done with those servers.

Posted by Micheline | June 24, 2008 10:33 AM

But in the case of terrorism, we have a Party in power believing it will benefit from its own failures.

Yeah, this goes back to the bizarre reaction Americans had to 9/11. I never for the life of me understood how Bush got a pass for the grotesque incompetence that led to that disaster. If Gore had been president, the right would have immediately demanded Gore's impeachment, imprisonment, and probably his execution.

Posted by davep | June 24, 2008 10:33 AM

Matt,

Could you give us an instance of a reasonable conservative (not, say, some weird Townhall columnist or Ann Coulter) or, better yet, John McCain himself, "openly yearning" for disaster to strike?

Nothing Black said could be construed as hoping for an attack on American soil to occur. He made the mistake of saying what most of us think, that an attack would redound to McCain's benefit.

This post was really shameless.

Posted by Matt S. | June 24, 2008 10:34 AM

It is moronic to say that anyone is "hoping" for a terrorist incident. There's no evidence of that - Matthew is just making up a smear.

Black is not "hoping" for anything - he is making a prediction about the likely result.

A prediction is not a hope. You really have to want to go out of your way to smear people to not be able to understand that difference - but Matthew is perfectly comfortable in smearing Republicans.

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 10:41 AM

Matt S.: Here you go.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 24, 2008 10:43 AM

A prediction is not a hope. You really have to want to go out of your way to smear people to not be able to understand that difference - but Matthew is perfectly comfortable in smearing Republicans.

It would certainly be a big advantage for me to win the lottery. But hey, that doesn't mean I'm hoping for it!

Posted by Freddie | June 24, 2008 10:44 AM

Nothing Black said could be construed as hoping for an attack on American soil to occur. He made the mistake of saying what most of us think, that an attack would redound to McCain's benefit.

It is moronic to say that anyone is "hoping" for a terrorist incident.

You know, if my rich uncle dies, he'll leave me a lot of money, and such a sudden influx of cash would sure be a big advantage to me. Especially since my financial situation is the worst it's been in years.

Of course, I'm not actually hoping he'll die.

Posted by James Gary | June 24, 2008 10:46 AM

"Black is not 'hoping' for anything - he is making a prediction about the likely result."

Please point to the place where Matt said that Black (and not "conservatives") was hoping for a terrorist attack.

Posted by Joe | June 24, 2008 10:46 AM

Micheline said... And that my friend lays at the feet of Bush and McCain.

How can you blame McCain? After all, he was sooooo right about Iraq. Just ask him. And look at on his web site.

Wait. That timeline starts in August 2003. Hey John, where are all your quotes and predictions BEFORE that?

Posted by LFC | June 24, 2008 10:46 AM

i got to admire whoa now: democrats want to withdraw from iraq, but whoa now claims that means that they hope it "stays a mess."

and no, most of us, matt s., think that if there were another terrorist attack in the next few months, it would demonstrate the ongoing failure of the bush administration to develop an effective anti-terror strategy. that's what "thinking" does for you.

what red-faced, lapel-flag-pin-wearing little propaganda robots who hate liberals more than anything else in the world would do in the face of another terrorist attack has nothing to do with thinking in the slightest....

Posted by howard | June 24, 2008 10:53 AM

Left unquestioned here is Black's premise, that an attack would surely boost McCain. I say it's highly debatable. Yes, the country rallied round Bush after 9/11, but they did the same for Carter when the hostages were taken (he soared to 75% approval) and he still lost the election on the preponderance of the evidence. Bush may well have won re-election in '04 not because of 9/11 but in spite of it -- because there'd been just enough success in Afghanistan, and not yet enough failure in Iraq (plus an economy that popped just in time for election year).

An analogy: In Spring '92, when the LA riots happened, Mona Charen, thinking back to the Johnson years, quickly proclaimed they would be a big political plus for GOPer GHWBush. In fact, it was exactly then that his polls fell irretrievably; he'd been ahead prior to that, but never led again post. Bad things happening on incumbents' watches tend to hurt them.

Or put it another way: voters trust Dems more on the economy. Does it then follow that a stock crash two months before the election would enhance the chances of Dems' holding the White House?

Posted by demtom | June 24, 2008 10:57 AM

Matt S. --

Define "reasonable conservative." Ann Coulter and the Townhall crowd aren't outliers; they represent what conservatism has become.

Matt Y.'s post was not shameless at all. I certainly construed Black's comments in the same way Matt did. And I don't agree that in a sane society an attack would benefit McCain. America temporarily lost its sanity after 9/11, which led to the absurd rallying around Bush. I might be wrong, but I don't think the majority of my countrymen and -women will make a similar mistake again.

Elvis E.: Nice link.

howard: Well put.

Posted by davep | June 24, 2008 10:57 AM

Total, flaming red herring Matt. Disgraceful.

Black fucked up, and will pay some consequences as will McCain, but as noted above it is simply outrageous to suggest that any serious policy is based on "hoping for terror" or similar disaster.

Except, of course, in the case of Democrats who frequently post here in flagrant disregard of the facts about Iraq today, or for that matter how we came to fight there in the first place, in hopes of painting it as black as possible.

Or, come to think about it, Democrats when they're predicting economic collapse, chaos and famine due to the greed of The Rich.

Posted by robert powell | June 24, 2008 11:00 AM

"Could you give us an instance of a reasonable conservative (not, say, some weird Townhall columnist or Ann Coulter) or, better yet, John McCain himself, 'openly yearning' for disaster to strike?"

"It is moronic to say that anyone is "hoping" for a terrorist incident. There's no evidence of that - Matthew is just making up a smear."

Rumsfeld, to the Pentagon Propaganda Squad: "This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it."

Posted by nitpicker | June 24, 2008 11:01 AM

We've already had a post-9/11 attack: the anthrax attacks, which President Bush called "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country."

Posted by croatoan | June 24, 2008 11:03 AM

Matt is shamelessly noting McCain's advisor's shamelessness. Have you no shame?

Posted by phil | June 24, 2008 11:05 AM

A few years ago I read in the Washington Post about how a bunch of neocons at the Pentagon (including Wolfowitz) had a pool going where they would bet on the likelihood of disasters happening, such as a coup in Saudi Arabia or the assassination of the King of Jordan. They wanted to see if betting on such things made them more likely to come true, kind of like a perverse Heisenberg Principle. It was shut down a day after being leaked. The GOP elite these days is just sick.

Posted by Reality Man | June 24, 2008 11:07 AM

The Democrats should make sure not to argue, "How dare the Republicans stoop to this...." yada yada -- that just concedes the point, that Dems can't be trusted with national security. Instead every syllable Obama and his surrogates say should be rooted in the idea, "I think I'd be a better president in a world without Al Qaeda, and I think I'd be a better president in a world with Al Qaeda. What's the big deal?" Obama, to his credit, has shown an ability to use humor in precisely this fashion to defuse purportedly "tricky" subjects.

Posted by Martin | June 24, 2008 11:10 AM

Martin: Obama's response is basically "We welcome this conversation, because we win it; also Black is a despicable asshole."

Posted by phil | June 24, 2008 11:14 AM

I suggest that in America there are some who cannot abide the idea of an African-American becoming president and occupying the White House. These people believe the White House refers to the race of the person who should occupy it.

I think Charlie Black is too smart to make an idle statement. There was a purpose to it. Was it to remind those mentioned above who dread the idea of Barack becoming president that there is a way to stop it? That is what makes the statement so evil. It is an invitation to terrorism.

Posted by Llyonnoc | June 24, 2008 11:17 AM

Please point to the place where Matt said that Black (and not "conservatives") was hoping for a terrorist attack.

The title of the post.

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 11:17 AM

Except, of course, in the case of Democrats who frequently post here in flagrant disregard of the facts about Iraq today,

Sooooo, how are we coming along with those benchmarks that Bush told us about oh so long ago? You know, the actual reason for the surge. Remember, even Gen. Petraeus said security was a means to an end ... give 'em space to allow political reconciliations work. Oil sharing? Power sharing? How's that goin'?

...or for that matter how we came to fight there in the first place,...

That's an easy one. Constant hyping of evidence by the President and his administratin. You'd have to be in a state of denial to say that Bushco didn't oversell the evidence they had, ignoring virtually everything contrary to what they already believed. Intentional fabrication or blind fear? Doesn't matter. They f***ed up royally.

Posted by LFC | June 24, 2008 11:18 AM

in flagrant disregard of the facts about Iraq today, or for that matter how we came to fight there in the first place

Here I have to agree with Robert Powell. It would be better if, when discussing how we went to war in Iraq, we paid more attention to the real reasons. And as Robert Powell says, people like himself were motivated more than anything by a straightforward hatred of the towelheads.

Fortunately, people like Powell are a minority (albeit an extremely vocal one). Still, it really does no one any good when war opponents discuss this subject in flagrant disregard of how we came to fight here in the first place.

Posted by 23456 | June 24, 2008 11:22 AM

To Reality Man,

Actually, it was and wasn't a betting pool, per se. The idea was to encourage handicapping of the odds of a terrorist strike or a terrorist target etc.

I was indeed withdrawn almost as soon as it became public. But the brainstorming on this idea began under the Clinton administration and those involved in said brainstorming vow that, however perverse the idea seems, such betting lines actually do an outstanding job of setting probabilities.

Of course, we'll probably never know for sure now. Some ideas may be too volatile to be thought.

Posted by DrewShaw | June 24, 2008 11:23 AM

They wanted to see if betting on such things made them more likely to come true, kind of like a perverse Heisenberg Principle. It was shut down a day after being leaked. The GOP elite these days is just sick.

This is the worst, most misleading description of a prediction market that I have ever read. While there is something macabre about having a market based on disasters (hence the poor response), the point is to aggregate diffuse information about what is actually likely to happen, not to influence the outcome in the least.

It was a good tool that got scuttled in deference to delicate sensibilities.

Posted by Brad L | June 24, 2008 11:25 AM

Hey, look at Al Gore HOPING FOR "a string of terrible catastrophes".

Al Gore HOPES FOR "more and stronger storms like Hurricane Katrina".

Al Gore HOPES FOR "melting [of] the North Polar ice cap and virtually all of the mountain glaciers in the world".

Al Gore HOPES FOR "a worldwide increase in sea levels of as much as twenty feet".

Al Gore HOPES TO "prevent formation of corals".

Al Gore HOPES FOR "the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago".

Al Gore must be an evil person because he HOPES FOR all those disasters to happen.

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 11:26 AM

Al, these days you seem to be constantly on the verge of bursting into tears.

Don't cry, Al!

Posted by 23456 | June 24, 2008 11:30 AM

Let's also recall that, even though Al Gore HOPES FOR all those natural disaster to occur, when he was in power he never did anything about them (indeed his Administration refused to send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification), and now his party are reaping the political benefits for global warming. All part of what Gore HOPES FOR.

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 11:31 AM

Al,

I'll concede that Yglesias' post title should not be taken 100% seriously. It represents many of our deepest fears about the Republicans (and is thus very appropriate for this blog), but cannot be supported with direct evidence.

On the other hand, are you willing to argue that it's a good thing for the party in power to truly believe that a terrorist attack on the US would benefit them politically? B/c that's a very important point that MY is making here. Seems to me like you're ignoring this aspect of the situation (not to anyone's surprise of course).

Posted by mpowell | June 24, 2008 11:34 AM

An interesting exercise in alternative history would be to imagine what would have happened if the 2001 war had been a success - if, for instance, the Americans had actually captured Osama bin Laden. Would it have then been possible to gin up the invasion of Iraq? Would it have been possible to pass the trillion dollar increases in military spending that temporarily zapped the American economy after the tech meltdown of 2000-2001?

GOP success is founded on GOP incompetence. GOP incompetence is founded on GOP calculation. If, by bad luck, the al qaeda leadership had actually been captured so that there was no way to turn them loose, the GOP would have been in terrible shape in 2004. Bush remembered one thing and one thing only about the past - his Dad's popularity, astonishingly high after the Gulf war, plummeted to the point where he lose. His son, a great one for massaging numbers, decided to massage up a war, upon which to get re-elected. It worked.

Of course, it required massive help from the media. If the media had for some reason dug in its feet, questioned the White House propaganda, even (gasp!) investigated on its own the puzzling fact that a small paramilitary group was able to quite easily withstand the onslaught of the supposed greatest power on earth - then things might have been tricky. Luckily, the media is run by people who share Bush's ideas and ideals. One of the excellent results of abrogating the anti-trust laws concerning media, a Clinton era special!

Let's hope Matt doesn't retreat from the title of the post, since it is exactly right.

Posted by roger | June 24, 2008 11:35 AM

I see my desperate plea that Al not start weeping in public has come too late.

Posted by 23456 | June 24, 2008 11:35 AM

Al, these days you seem to be constantly on the verge of bursting into tears.

Normally I refuse to feed the trolls' ad hominem attacks, but I gotta say: huh?

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 11:36 AM

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Rebuilding America's Defenses

by PNAC (i.e Wolfowitz, Kagan, Kristol, Cohen, Cambone, Libby et al), September 2000

Make of that what you want.

Posted by novakant | June 24, 2008 11:37 AM

The 'it'll benefit the GOP' take on another terrorist attack is just wishful Republican thinking combined with wrongheaded beltway punditry (is there any other kind?). The public isn't so gullible as to swallow a 'we'll keep you safer' line from a government that just failed to keep people safe ... again.

Posted by Jack H. | June 24, 2008 11:42 AM

Normally I refuse to feed the trolls' ad hominem attacks, but I gotta say: huh?

Hilarious!

Yes, Al, we know you're not crying. You're not! You're not crying like a frustrated toddler. You just, um, got something in your eye.

Al, it's all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you!

Posted by 23456 | June 24, 2008 11:50 AM

Why is this stupid argument about "hoping" breaking out in this thread. It doesn't matter if Republicans hope that there's another terrorist attack. Republicans believe that their failure to prevent terrorist attacks will rebound to their advantage. This is an incredibly perverse insentive that serves to explain the monumental screwups perpetrated by the Republicans over the last 7 years.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 24, 2008 11:51 AM

"GOP success is founded on GOP incompetence. GOP incompetence is founded on GOP calculation."

Good point. Apparently Nixon told Bush I he made the mistake of ending the war before the election. Bush I was competent and lost. Bush II is incompetent and won re-election.

Posted by Reality Man | June 24, 2008 11:54 AM

On the other hand, are you willing to argue that it's a good thing for the party in power to truly believe that a terrorist attack on the US would benefit them politically?

I don't think it is particularly important one way or another. I don't think the situation is that uncommon. Health care problems have always benefitted the Democrats - but I don't think that the Democrats purposefully or hope to ruin health care (when they are in power) in order to reap the political benefits.

As a matter of political prognostication, BTW, I completely disagree with Black. Another terrorist attack will act to validate what the Democrats have been saying about the Republican approach to terrorism, and therefore would be disastrous for McCain. The one thing that the Republican approach to terrorism (including Iraq, which the Republicans believe is part of the war on terrorism) has going for it is that, so far, it has been successful in preventing another attack on the US.

Posted by Al | June 24, 2008 11:58 AM

How reasonable is it to trust that a political movement will bring safety to the country when they themselves believe that doing so would ill-serve their interests?

This is true of the politics of any intervention - if you're advocating a more aggressive approach to deal with a problem, it benefits you politicaly if a problem gets worse. If the situation that prompts the demand for the intervention gets worse, it benefits people advocating for the intervention. Advocates of stricter FDA controls benefit politically from tainted tomatoes, advocates of infrastructure investment benefit politically from bridge collapses, advocates for an increased social safety net benefit when people are unemployed or lose their health insurance, GHG regulation proponents benefit from hot weather, and of course advocates of aggressive intervention to prevent terrorist attacks benefit from terrorist attacks. It works at the bureaucracy level too - if FEMA wants an increase in its funding, the easiest way to get it is to squander it's resources so it's response is inadequate; if you want more funding to go to the education budget, bad test scores are a way of getting it. This tendency is countered to a degree by competition between proposed interventions - if the problem gets worse and your political opponents are proposing a different way of solving it, it works in their favor, not yours. This is a major factor in creating the "do something" bias of the political process, in that it is generally politically expedient to propose some form of government action in response to a problem, even if the action is worthless or counterproductive. If you seen anything unique about this situation, you're hopelessly naive; failure reenforcing the demand for intervention is one of the fundamental mechanisms shaping public policy.

Posted by MattXIV | June 24, 2008 12:09 PM

I've never seen anyone long for a Reichstag fire like Newt Gingrich, he's been drooling about it for years.

Posted by mike | June 24, 2008 12:13 PM

"How reasonable is it to trust that a political movement will bring safety to the country when they themselves believe that doing so would ill-serve their interests?"

It reminds me somehow of McCain's Iraq policy: We need to stay in Iraq until they stop killing us - so that then we can stay in Iraq.

Posted by joey heller | June 24, 2008 1:01 PM

That the success of a political program can lead to the failure of the political party that pushed it through is evidenced in the whole history of the modern Democratic party. The New Deal Dems laid down the foundations for the rise of the vastly expanded Cold War middle class, with bills making homeowning and education accessible to millions who never had that chance before. As the middle class entrenched itself, it began to turn away from the Democratic policies that had created it - the class was richer, and forgot its ascent from the working class level so that it resented any attempt to do for the poor the same things that were done for it. The white benefactors of the GI bills that made suburban housing available to them, back by government guarantees, were horrified at the idea that the government might do the same things for blacks in the 60s, and might even make it impossible to keep the nice racist barriers in place that made it impossible for black families to settle in the suburbs.

The success of a political program changes the environment. Such are the facts of life. The GOP, first under Nixon with the slogan, Peace with Honor, and then, much more systematically, under Bush II with the global war on terror, introduced a twist: the complete separation of rhetoric and reality. In reality, they would manage to fail systematically - in relation to Pakistan, for instance, Bush has produced a foreign policy of astonishing weakness, something that makes Chamberlain appeasing Hitler about Czechoslovakia seem like a tower of strength. Chamberlain, at least, never turned a blind eye while Hitler directed attacks on British soldiers, which is what the Bushies did with Pakistan's ISI. On the other hand, the GOP floods the airwaves with a feral aggressiveness that confidently "owns" the issue of national security. Under the cover of that rhetoric, the GOP can go about its business of, for instance, crawling on its belly before the Saudis without anybody even noticing. Both bullying and craven, Bush has combined the vices of all foreign policy approaches into one. An amazing amalgam, I think. It works because it is psychologically attuned to its base. The base wants, really, zero sacrifice in its life - which would, rationally, lead to a foreign policy as peaceful as Sweden's. But at the same time, it is culturally fixated on an action hero superego self image. It loves to imagine itself as heroic, as having magical powers. And its belief in magic is pretty much a throwback to the sixteenth century - look at the proliferation of creationist museums and books that this constituency absolutely loves. It has trained itself to look for miracles, and thus has no problem straddling the divide between rhetoric and reality.

Posted by roger | June 24, 2008 1:03 PM

Black fucked up, and will pay some consequences as will McCain, but as noted above it is simply outrageous to suggest that any serious policy is based on "hoping for terror" or similar disaster.

Except, of course, in the case of Democrats who frequently post here in flagrant disregard of the facts about Iraq today, or for that matter how we came to fight there in the first place, in hopes of painting it as black as possible.

The facts about Iraq today:

Beyond the declines in overall violence in Iraq, several crucial measures the Bush administration uses to demonstrate economic, political and security progress are either incorrect or far more mixed than the administration has acknowledged, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

Over all, the report says, the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration’s goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines.

Posted by nitpicker | June 24, 2008 1:48 PM

Please point to the place where Matt said that Black (and not "conservatives") was hoping for a terrorist attack.

The title of the post.

Actual title of the post: "Hoping for Terror"

Is the "Black" in the title in a really, really tiny font?

(Does Al get paid per post?)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 24, 2008 2:01 PM

roger:

Excellent post.

Posted by brewmn | June 24, 2008 2:55 PM

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Rebuilding America's Defenses

by PNAC (i.e Wolfowitz, Kagan, Kristol, Cohen, Cambone, Libby et al), September 2000

I guess Powell forgot to read that part about Pearl Harbor even though it comes before the part he's always talking about - the need for endless American military presence in the Gulf (because of our "vital interests" - i.e., oil). His talking points come right out of the PNAC document. You'd think he was one of the signatories.

"Al, it's all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you!"

Al is just following the example of Cameron on the
Terminator show. She learned that you can write a note if you're too sad to cry. You can look at Al's posts like that. They are how he blubbers while still letting him feel like a manly conservative.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 24, 2008 5:40 PM

Iraq has been a catastrophe of one sort or another since before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. We haven't had a credible option to just ignore it for at least three decades, nor appear likely to have one any time soon Pat Buchanan types notwithstanding. Currently, it's doing pretty well under the circumstances.

It's great to follow the "experts" here. First, the Iraqi government, elected by a huge turnout of people risking their lives to vote, and governing heroically in the face of terrorist opposition, is a "puppet regime".

Then, when they give the heave-ho to America's favorite ex-pat leadership, demand a say in how to fight the war, insist on defining their own relationship with Iran, make hard conditions on the SOFA agreement, and demonstrate an appropriate skepticism about "benchmarks" that have more to do with politics in Washington than Baghdad, they're uncooperative ingrates who should be abandoned.

Fortunately, the grown-ups will remain in charge no matter who wins the election.

Posted by robert powell | June 24, 2008 6:22 PM

Democrats and Liberals do not NEED to hope that Iraq stays a mess; no chance of anything else.

Posted by Miande | June 24, 2008 8:30 PM