from Huffington Post:
For much of the last decade, the Republican line about liberals has been that whenever we downplayed the urgency of the so-called terrorist threat (or dared to criticize then-President Bush for that matter) we were somehow emboldening the terrorists.
For example, during the 2004 campaign, John Kerry was annihilated by the Dick Cheney wingnut right when he said, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance."
Oh holy hell! Kerry said what?!
He was exactly right, of course, both strategically and rhetorically. The senator was outlining how we ought to be simultaneously destroying al-Qaeda and, in the "home of the brave," we ought to be acting like grown-ups rather than a nation of scared little pee-pants infants frightened of unseen toe monsters lurking under the bed.
Cheney and others, in response to Kerry, were very clearly implying that terrorism was always going to be a serious and existential threat to America -- that we have every right to be both terrified and terrorized -- therefore we absolutely have to torture people, undermine the rule of law, preemptively invade sovereign nations and, naturally, elect Republicans in order to be safe.
What the far-right has never grasped, however, is that the whole point of a terrorist attack isn't necessarily to kill people. The point is to terrorize. Scott Shanes in the New York Times quoted a former Homeland Security and CIA official:
"We give comfort to our enemies," said Charles E. Allen, a 40-year C.I.A. veteran who served as the top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security from 2007 to early last year. Exaggerated news coverage and commentary, he said, "creates an atmosphere of tension and fear, and to me that's exactly the wrong way to go."
Fareed Zakaria spelled it out even further this week:
The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well.
In the case of the Underpants Bomber, by collectively losing our sh*t and inflating a minor fracas out of proportion -- by acting as though this was a major bloody attack and subsequently acquiescing to full body scans and further violations of our civil liberties, we're handing al-Qaeda a victory. The attempt was a failure, but the overreaction in its aftermath turned it into an easy win for al-Qaeda.
Good job, Republicans. Good job, Fox News.
Speaking of which, it didn't take long for Fox Nation to run a banner headline equating the failed Underpants Bomber incident with the earthquake in Haiti.
"Pres. Obama Reacts to Haiti Earthquake Faster Than Christmas Bomber"
Not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh said the same thing on his Wednesday radio broadcast.
The implication of Limbaugh and the Fox Nation headline was that the President should have reacted more quickly to the relatively very minor Underpants Bomber than to the catastrophic earthquake that might've killed upwards of 500,000 people. In this case, they're amplifying a failed incendiary device to a level more significant than a massive loss of life in one of the world's most destructive natural disasters.
Of course the President is going to react more quickly to a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti than he is to a Junior Qaeda with an exploding taint (who, by the way, didn't kill anyone). Any rational observer can see that the President's reactions have been proportional to the gravity of the events.
Nevertheless, Limbaugh and Fox Nation continue to illustrate how the far-right invariably overreacts to terrorism, blowing it way out of proportion and elevating a scattered network of radicals to a fighting status equaling the mighty United States. It's been this way since September 11. "The response of the onlookers," as Zakaria wrote, has been obscene.
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