The panic artists are back
by digby
Via Politico:
Hawkish Sen. Tom Cotton was confronted by an anti-war activist on Friday, provoking a tense and awkward exchange about the United States’s role overseas.
Fred Boenig, whose son died in Afghanistan in 2010, was seated next to Cotton at a foreign policy discussion at Johns Hopkins’ campus in Washington. As Cotton, a veteran of military conflicts in the Middle East, went through his brawny foreign policy views and bashed President Barack Obama’s “dangerous” vision in Iran and other global hotspots, he turned to ask Boenig about the four pins he was wearing.
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The Pennsylvania man explained they signify the service of four of his children in the military, then said when Cotton speaks all he hears is “somebody knocking at my door again” with bad news, challenging the senator to identify when the last U.S. military casualty overseas occurred, the same challenge he gave self-proclaimed hawk Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) in February.
ericans have died in Afghanistan but couldn’t give the precise answer, which Boenig said was 58 days. He then asked when Americans can truly say war is over in the Middle East.
“There’s no definite answer because our enemies get a vote in this process. I’m deeply sorrowful for your loss and I greatly honor the service that all of your children have rendered, like all of our veterans do. But in the end the best way to honor our veterans … ” Cotton responded.
“Is to have more killed?” interrupted Boenig.
“ … Is to win the wars in which they’ve fought,” Cotton finished.
The anti-war Boenig, a radio host in Pennsylvania, was unimpressed and went on to criticize Cotton for attending a defense contractor’s meeting after sending an open letter to Iran’s senior leadership.
“It’s very clear what your views are sir. My views are keeping our kids safe, which include my children. Now that you have a child, you will understand,” Boenig warned Cotton, who just celebrated the birth of his first son. “When you speak of sending our kids again, let’s make it worth it not just to send them to politically help some Haliburton or somebody else.”
Cotton insisted that the current “threat environment that we face here at home and throughout the West is more grave today than at anytime during our lifetimes.”
“I wish that weren’t that case,” Cotton said. “But for the time being it is. We have to remain vigilant and we have to continue to take the fight to the terrorist.”
It has become an article of faith on the right that "the threat environment we face here at home is more grave today than anytime during our lifetimes." Is that true? Mr Boenig brought up the fact that they don't have an air force or a navy with which to invade our shores so we don't have anything to fear from a bunch of people running around in pick-up trucks in the middle eastern desert. So what are we facing? Lone wolves who want to come in a shoot up places? Well, I hate to inform these people that we've had lone wolves shooting up the place for decades.
Fort Hood was terrorist related. The rest, not so much. The Boston bombing was terrible but so was Oklahoma City and there was no muslim connection to that one.
The point is that if we didn't panic over all those "Lone Wolf" shootings it seems like we should be able keep our heads about this Islamic Lone Wolf threat that has Tom Cotton and Lindsay Graham running around in circles screeching that they're all coming to kill us in our beds.
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