Cenk Uygur at the Huffington Post notices the same thing I did this morning:
We’ve been hearing for years now this absurd argument from the Bush administration that we have to fight the terrorists over there, so that we don’t have to fight them here.
Well, it turns out shockingly enough the terrorists can multitask.
As CIA and US military reports indicate, the war in Iraq has only helped to recruit more terrorists to the cause of al-Qaeda. This allows them to fight us more effectively over there AND over here.
President Bush should never be able to state this silly, irrational argument for the war in Iraq ever again without being forcefully challenged.
He goes on to explain that the real war was in Afghanistan, how we missed the opportunity to decapitate al Qaeda by capturing Osama, and how our policies are continuing to fuel extremist Muslim hatred of the West.
How many blows are we going to absorb before we change course? This is not a fight you can win by invading more countries and launching more bombs. As every military, political and strategic analyst will tell you — it is a war for the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. It is a war against fundamentalism.
We have to take the ideology of fundamentalism on and defeat it. The fundamentalists of all the religions, but especially the Muslims today, are causing us to go down a cycle of violence that will lead us to endless wars and more violence.
And therein lies the problem, Cenk. Bush likes fundamentalism. He calls it “the base”. He whips ’em up with visions of married fags and burned flags, scares ’em with threats of banned Bibles and confiscated guns, and infuses “Christian might makes right” and “God Bless America… and nowhere else” into everything he says and does.
Bush just thinks that our fundamentalism (religious, political, and capitalist) is superior to and capable of defeating their fundamentalism. Bush thinks that once “they” get a good look at how wonderful and superior our fundamentalism is, it will take root like a weed and spread throughout the Middle East.
Yes, al Qaeda is evil and Jerry Falwell is no bin Laden. Yes, we are (on the whole) better than they are. And yes, no matter what we do, it is likely that some extremists will hate us and try to blow us up. But Bush has seen the grease fire of terrorism and is trying to put it out with holy water.
