From Beirut To The Twilight Zone
Kevin Drum takes on the Tom Friedman "appeasement" op-ed today on his great new blog Political Animal. (And why wasn't that one taken a loong time ago? Was somebody saving it for a renowned cat blogger to go big time?) Anyway, Kevin is definitely getting more animalistic. His take on what I agree was a steaming mound of something is downright combative:
This kind of stuff belongs on the pages of a third tier warblogger, not the op-ed page of the New York Times. It's juvenile and disgusting.
I love it. And Kevin is right. This nonsensical Friedman blather is even worse than his usual drivel and I didn't think that was possible. He suggests that even though the socialists ran on the platform of withdrawal from Iraq and even though the population never supported it and even though Friedman acknowledges that the Bush administration is making a total hash out of the occupation, the new Spanish government should not withdraw from Iraq because it would appease al Qaeda.
Picture if you will, September 11, 2001 and Al Gore is President of the United States. Terrorists attack London. Al Gore responds by joining Tony Blair in attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan and disrupting Al Qaeda's operation. Almost immediately, they begin planning to invade Iraq and do so just a little more than a year later, against the will of most US allies and most Americans. It soon becomes obvious that Blair and Gore's assertions of connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq were wrong (as were all the other national security rationales they set forth to justify the war.) The Republicans are going crazy, demanding special prosecutors, impeachment and criminal charges. (You know they would. Here are some of their comments on Kosovo.)
Meanwhile, Gore insists that the war in Iraq was absolutely necessary to protect America from the terrorist threat and he refuses to back down on this assessment. The first week in November the polls show the election is close. The economy is sluggish and people are restless. The war in Iraq is unpopular, but is no longer at the top of the newscasts. 3 days before people go to the polls, terrorists blow up several nightclubs in Miami, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.
The Gore administration casts the blame on pro-Castro terrorists. Doubts emerge immediately and within hours it becomes obvious that the Gore administration was again misleading the country about national security. He loses the election by a significantly wider margin than the polls had predicted.
The Republicans, chagrined and embarrassed, admit that the result was bad because the US has just "appeased" al Qaeda. Therefore, they promise to continue Al Gore's foreign policy, despite the fact that they completely disagree with it and a large majority of the country rejects it, because they know that it would be wrong to allow Al Qaeda to believe they were cowed by its terrorism.
And the next day Neo destroys the Matrix and live bats fly out of Lynn Cheney's mouth on Larry King Live.