BCT Editorial – 7/15/07

This page was last updated on August 6, 2007.

The real issue; Editorial; Beaver County Times; July 15, 2007.

“The arrest of six Muslims accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey should remind Americans that terrorists can strike at any time and any place.” – Be prepared; Editorial; Beaver County Times; May 14, 2007.

“The attempted car bombings in Great Britain remind us that terrorism has become a long-term fact of life.” – A reminder; Editorial; Beaver County Times; July 3, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“President Bush and other administration officials are fast approaching Chicken Little status when it comes to issuing terrorism warnings.”

[RWC] In my critiques of two editorials I quoted above, I wrote both “If you recall, statements like this by anyone in the Bush administration result in fear mongering charges” and “Here’s my reminder. Don’t forget that when anyone in the U.S. to the right of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), etc. makes comments similar to the above, Times editorials refer to that as fear mongering.”

As if on cue, today we read, “President Bush and other administration officials are fast approaching Chicken Little status when it comes to issuing terrorism warnings.” Geez, the Times almost makes this too easy.

“Speaking in Cleveland last week, the president pitched the al-Qaida-in-Iraq fear factor once again.

“‘Al-Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence,’ Bush told a business group in Cleveland, Ohio. ‘The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims.’

“He also trotted out the scare tactic that if we don’t fight them there they’ll attack us here.

“‘They will kill a Muslim, a child or a woman at a moment’s notice to achieve a political objective,’ Bush said. ‘They are dangerous people that need to be confronted, and that’s why since Sept. 11 our policy has been to find them and defeat them overseas so we don’t have to face them here at home again.’

“But as the McClatchy Newspapers report on the speech showed, all is not what it seems when it comes out of the president’s mouth.

“To start with, al-Qaida in Iraq didn’t emerge until 2004, well after the U.S.-led invasion of that country. While the Iraq organization is inspired by Osama bin Laden’s violent ideology, the news service reported there’s no evidence that it is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides.

“The president also was misleading when it came to the source of most of the violence in Iraq. The McClatchy article noted that while U.S. intelligence and military officials view al-Qaida in Iraq as a serious threat, they say the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites, and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“The president’s we-have-to-fight-them-there argument isn’t just wearing thin. It also raises a moral question: Is it better that innocent Iraqis - Muslims, children, women - die so that innocent Americans can live? If all life is sacred, as Bush argued when he vetoed stem-cell legislation, then, if you buy his over-there argument, American lives must be more sacred than Iraqi lives.

“On the same day Bush made the Cleveland speech, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune he had a gut feeling that al-Qaida might be stepping up its activities this summer.

“By constantly resorting to scare tactics like this, administration officials run the risk of having the American people tune them out.”

“That could have terrible consequences. The United States will be attacked by terrorists. It’s not a matter of if but when - and how many times.

[RWC] Wow, the Times sure is accommodating. In the same editorial which accuses “President Bush and other administration officials” of being Chicken Littles and “resorting to scare tactics” regarding terrorism, the Times itself concurs, “It’s not a matter of if but when - and how many times” we’ll be attacked.

“The real issue is whether our nation is prepared for and has the resiliency to respond to these attacks. That’s something this White House is not talking about.”

[RWC] Beefing up intelligence gathering capabilities is one of the actions we need to take to be prepared. As a reminder, Times editorials have bashed just about all of these measures as attacks on our civil liberties. The editorial “Legal technicality” is only one example.