Fun With Fearmongering


A WaPo op-ed by two retired soldiers tries to inject a little reason into the GOP debate between the various Chicken Littles running for president:

...it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation...

These assertions that "torture works" may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

Well, I'll tell you what's been gained: political power, pure and simple. The lust and greed that provides both motivation and payoff is decadent and depraved to the extent that 9/11 itself is, for these assholes, little more than a bloody-banner clarion call...not for justice but retribution (which specifically eschews justice, even as I think we've more than obtained our proverbial pound of flesh).

No lesson is, for these creeps, to simple to be ignored as they seek to outdo each other in rhetorical cries for blood-lust orgies of violence, matched only by the sheer ineffectiveness: bin Laden's re-established himself in Pakistan, Iraq is a chaotic quagmire.

Meanwhile, all the other REAL dangers don't merit mention at all: it sure as hell wasn't terrorists who built crappy levees that failed during what was essentially a large rainstorm. Islamofascists aren't the ones presiding over the gradual crumbling of the national infrastructure. Nor did they underfund/gut public education. And they didn't sow the seeds of rage, frustration, and dysfunctionality that generate the sorts of criminals whom we should really be worried/do something about.

But discussion of the real issues facing this country requires a degree of maturity that's evidently anathema to wingnuttia. Ergo, the virtual cartoonish placating of them with promises that amount to little more than...well, American fascism.

No wonder they like Willard and Rudy. The perfect mix/match of evil and stupid.