The all too human tendency to blame the bearer of bad news was recognized almost 2500 years ago by one of the great tragedians of ancient Greece, Sophocles, whose plays supplied Sigmund Freud with a wealth of material from which to frame his theories of psychological development. According to Wikipedia, the expression "Don't kill the messenger" was uttered by a messenger in the play Antigone.
Tuesday night on Fox News, a poll was reported that revealed that 70% of the American respondents believed that we will be in a full scale war with Islam within the next 20 years. Yet, at the same time, President Bush's approval ratings hover around the 40% mark. While some will claim this is because we were misled into the war, or that the war has been and is being waged incompetently, I am not persuaded that these possibilities explain the seeming contradiction.
Victor Davis Hanson has maintained that part of the disapproval Bush is suffering is simply a logical outcome of the war not ending quickly in victory. I think there is something to this, but the contrast with WWII, which proceeded rather poorly for a very long time before we finally won, or the long term stalemate on the Korean peninsula, suggests there is more to the picture.
The MSM is filled with stories of the rising tide of anti-Republican sentiment in the country and the Democrats gleefully prepare to take over the House and Senate. In normal times, this would simply be the usual swing of the pendulum back toward the middle after one party rule had worn out its welcome. However, these are not normal times and 70% of the public apparently recognizes that we are in the early stages of the Long War.
This raises a question: How can 70% of the American people believe we are in the early stages of the Long War and then turn around and vote for the party whose program includes doing those very things that are likely to strengthen our enemies?
Stop the ACLU has an excellent post about the The Geneva Conventions and Habeas Corpus: Why the Left-Wing Reactionaries are Wrong which is worth reading in full:
The reactionary hand-wringing about the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is wholly devoid of intellectual support and contradicted by the Geneva Conventions themselves. The flaccid objections are based in three parts: that unlawful combatants can be anyone, Habeas Corpus is a right enjoyed by military combatants, and a misunderstanding of the Geneva Convention documents (if they are read at all). Through on top a healthy dose of paranoia and you have basically the entire dogma of the liberal establishment on the issue.
Liberal objections to Military Tribunals hinge on its betrayal of our fundamental precepts, or the poor example it sets before the world ("we are better than them") but nowhere do they argue that offering terrorists more rights will enable us to prosecute the war more effectively. Even the most ardent liberal can recognize that, while torture may be a bad thing in and of itself, and they may have an expansive definition of torture, there is no compelling argument that limiting our ability to fight a war helps us win it.
Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette posts a trenchant article about one of the most well respected voices of liberalism in the land, Thomas Friedman, whose peregrinations over the Iraq War deserve an in depth look but are hidden behind the Times Select firewall. In Al Qaeda "A-list" Journalist Responds Greyhawk points to a Friedman article which acknowledges the existence of an al Qaeda manual that instructs its followers how to manipulate the Western Media:
Over at the New York Times, Tom Friedman confirms the existence of al Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America" first revealed here.
Says Tommy:
The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the “Global Islamic Media Front” carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: “The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.”
....
Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to “chat rooms,” “television channels,” and to “famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses ... such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.” This is the first time I’ve ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.
How wonderful. (By the way, I'm not the guy that sent him a copy.)His very next sentence:
It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy. But
And yes, what follows that "but" is exactly what you'd expect - a call to leave Iraq. You see, he has the courage to stick to his convictions even though he knows it's exactly what the terrorists want him to do.
Which is why he's on the same list as Chomsky.
(Greyhawk also links to Tigerhawk's excellent exegesis of the history of the Tet Offensive for the history challenged, which sadly appears to include most of our MSM.)
Here's the kicker: Greyhawk is wrong. Tom Friedman does not have "the courage to stick to his convictions even though he knows it's exactly what the terrorists want him to do. " The fact is that if Tom Friedman supported the decision to invade Iraq, which is unmistakably part of the Long War, in fact the Jihadis insist upon its inclusion as a major front in the War, then pulling out of Iraq, essentially surrendering, is in fact a 180 degree change of Tom's mind without any clear case being made that it is anything but a defeat for the West!
What ties these thoughts together is a sense that America would prefer to close its eyes and not see the threat that 70% believe is already on the horizon. Our continued presence in Iraq is a constant reproach to those of us who would prefer to return to the halcyon days of the 1990s when the world was a safe place where we could all become rich on dot.coms and no one had to ever risk life or limb for anything. Part of the hatred of George Bush is not just because he represents the unwanted news that the country is growing increasingly "Red" (and who decided that more conservative states ought to be depicted as "red"; isn't that counter-intuitive?) but he embodies our awareness of the struggle we are still in the early stages of, and our determination to stand and fight. George Bush, in effect, is the messenger who warns us of the approaching storm and almost 2500 years later, many still would prefer to kill the messenger than face the storm.
I imagine that despite all the well earned disgust with the Republicans, on election day, enough of us will realize that the storm is coming that the MSM will once again be disappointed and surprised.
Recent Comments