Using Bin Laden to Win an Election

Mark Halperin pulls back the mask on the Republican Party and reveals that the way they wage the war on terror is tied to elections and consolidating power, not protecting the American people.

While using Time magazine to run down a lazy man's list of ideas as to how John McCain can win in November (is this more of that awful, biased media coverage McCain was whining about?), Halperin and his editor should have left this one off the list:

–For Osama bin Laden to be captured in a way that helps the White House and the Republican brand.

Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden should be the goal of someone wanting to protect America from a deadly enemy, not the goal of someone looking to "help" an incompetent White House who let bin Laden get away or to "re-brand" the Republican Party.

Anyone with a brain knows that the Bush Administration is going to do whatever they can to try to get bin Laden before they leave office. That they would cynically allow bin Laden to remain free until such time as they can stage an October Surprise to try to help John McCain win the presidency--and thereby ensure that the lawbreaking of the Bush administration can go unpunished because a President McCain would likely look the other way, instruct the Justice Department to do nothing, or pardon anyone brought up on charges AFTER President Bush signs a flurry of pardons this January before he leaves office, is a fucking disgrace.

A fucking disgrace, a sham, and an insult to all of the Americans who died on September 11, all of the Americans who have died fighting terror, anyone who has sacrificed to keep America safe.

The Republican Party is party of cynical, desperate fear-mongering. And Mark Halperin is one of their many enablers and apologists.

--WS

A Moderate Form of Islam Does Exist

Michael Totten gives us an invaluable look at how moderate Islam does exist, and I do believe that not enough attention is paid to this fact:

I’m accustomed to spending quality time in moderate Islamic environments. I lived in the most liberal and cosmopolitan Sunni neighborhood in Beirut next to the American University, and I’ve vacationed with my wife in famously moderate Muslim countries like Tunisia and Turkey. Kosovo surprised even me and forced me to redefine my very conception of what a moderate Muslim even is. Kosovo is so thoroughly modern and secularized that if it weren’t for the mosques on the skyline there would be no visible evidence that Kosovo is a Muslim-majority country at all. Kosovo looks no more religious than France.

The fact that Kosovo even exists is because we were finally forced to step up and do something about the Milosevic regime. I have to give credit to President Bush for not following through on what he intimated in the 2000 campaign and withdrawing from the Balkans. I have to say, also, that John McCain was virtually alone in the Republican caucus for supporting Bill Clinton's intervention in the region, even if it was a bit half-hearted. The problem is, the foreign policy decisions made by Bush and McCain are overwhelmingly in the category of disastrous and counterproductive; with regards to Kosovo, we see a glimmer of something positive. If only they were able to think more clearly, right?

Mr. Totten talks about how the bin Laden influence came to the region in the 1990s:

Around a thousand mujahideen, veteran Arabic fighters from the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan, showed up in Bosnia in the mid-1990s to fight a jihad against Serbian Orthodox Christians. They thought they would be welcomed, and they were right. The European community imposed an arms embargo on all of Yugoslavia during the Bosnian civil war which preserved the imbalance of power and arms in favor of Slobodan Milosevic and his nationalist Bosnian Serb comrades in arms. The Bosnian army was multi-ethnic and multi-confessional – it included Serb and Croat Christians as well as Bosniak Muslims – but its leaders chose to accept help from the so-called “Afghan Arabs” because they were desperate.

I don't know how many people are aware of this, but in the hours after the attacks on September 11, 2001, US troops based in the former Yugoslavia went into action almost right away and rounded up as many of these mujahideen as they could. The locals pointed out where they were and members of the 29th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit based on the East Coast, which had sent troops to the region, went into action. They surrounded homes, kicked in doors, and put them into detention before the smoke cleared over Manhattan. I know this because a senior NCO from that unit told me how the raids were carried out--the mujahideen were shocked and surprised and made little or no effort to escape. No one expected the Americans to move so quickly. The 9/11 attacks had caught them flat footed. Thus, the first strike against bin Laden after 9/11 was carried out by citizen soldiers who had been deployed overseas to help protect Muslims from being slaughtered. The irony is they were arresting mujahideen were there do so the exact same thing.

--WS

Six years ago today

Six years ago today, I woke to a phone call. I turned on the TV and I watched in horror. Most of us did.

If you had told me that day that six years later the perpetrator of the attack would be free, but we wouldn't -I would have called you daft. And today I would owe you an apology.

Six years, and though we know the identity of the largest mass murderer in our history, we can not apprehend him.

So why, exactly have they found it necessary to suspend Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment, and infringe on a whole bunch of the others, in order to fight terrorism, when they can't bring in the most wanted and well known criminal on the planet? But they find it necessary to spy on the Quakers.

Can we get some freakin' accountability going here, please?

I've said it before but it bears repeating. Sometimes, I feel like I'm watching four year olds play government. Other times I feel like I am watching drunken monkeys play with loaded handguns.