Yikes! We Liberals Are Emboldening The Terrorists

Trust Fox News to drag the level of public debate into the sewer. This screenshot is from their website (h/t to C&L).

Since Tuesday's electoral rout, one of the common themes in the right-wing blogosphere and among the bloviating cowards on talk radio is that Al-Qaida is emboldened by the Democratic Party's victory. The wingnuts are gloating over a statement issued by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, which praised the election result, derided President Bush as stupid, pledged to blow up the White House and dared Bush to keep U.S. troops in Iraq.

Here are some examples of how the right-wing echo chamber reacted to this statement:

From PowerLine:

Do the Democrats feel at all sheepish at having their victory hailed by al Qaeda? Do they feel any pressure to demonstrate to the American people that they are not a de facto ally of the terrorists? Not as far as we've noticed so far. But when the Democrats stop celebrating, they may want to pause long enough to consider a simple question: Why are the terrorists so happy that they won?

That seems to imply we should take everything a terrorist says as gospel. Why should Democrats have to demonstrate anything to anybody based on the lunatic rantings of an Islamic thug? Last time I checked, David Duke was a Republican. So should every Republican be forced to demonstrate that they are not a de facto ally of the KKK?

Talking of lunatic rantings, here's Rush:

All right, I must regain my composure here. The Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, "praised the outcome of Tuesday's elections in which Democrats swept to power in the House and the Senate, in large part due to U.S. voter dissatisfaction over the handling of the war in Iraq. 'The American people--'" he's talking about you "'--have put their feet on the right path by realizing--" (Laughing.) I'm sorry, I thought I could get through this. Hang on just a second. Blow the nose. Sorry, there's no way of doing this silently. It is what it is. All right, take three. Yeah, let me try this a different way. Let me translate it. The Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader said, my fellow Democrats, "'The American people have put their feet on the right path by realizing their president's betrayal in supporting Israel,' the terror leader said. 'So they voted for something reasonable in the last elections.' Describing President Bush as 'the most stupid president' in U.S. history, al-Masri reached out to the Muslim world and said his group was winning the war in Iraq faster than expected due to U.S. policies."

From Dan Riehl:

These people did enough damage when they were running, it isn’t delusional to think about how much more dangerous they soon will become. If you didn’t take notice of George McGovern coming to town, you should. How long before they send Jane Fonda to Iraq for a public relations tour? The Democrats undermined our war effort to gain political power. It’s foolish to think they will turn into something different over night, no matter how nice they seem to want to play for now.

Wake up, America. These aren’t your Father’s Democrats. They haven’t been that since McGovern came to town the first time, in case you’ve forgotten. Let the MSM media carry their water. I’ve no intention of falling down that hill.

There are many other examples, but most of them are just too sickening to repeat. 

Fortunately, Ed Morrisey at the conservative blog Captain's Quarters offers a note of sanity. Good for you, Ed:

The reality is that we cannot win the war on terror without the Democrats after these midterm elections. Rather than continue with antagonizing rhetoric, we’d better find ways to engage them rationally in this effort if we want to survive. I’m hoping we can find common ground with them now that they have the responsibility to govern. If we can’t, then let’s criticize them for their actual failures, and not get so intent on grasping at any way to attack them that we start becoming repeater stations for the ravings of genocidal lunatics.

I find it interesting that so many on the right hang on every word uttered by these Islamic nutbags. They somehow think they have a monopoly on fighting terror and that they are the only ones who understand the nature of the threat, even though most of them couldn't have pinpointed Afghanistan on a world map before 9/11, never mind told you the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite.

They conveniently forget that the leader of their party has become the most effective terrorist recruitment tool we have ever seen. They forget that instead of staying in Afghanistan and destroying Al-Qaida once and for all, Decider-Boy led us on a fool's errand in Iraq and created the biggest terrorist training camp the world has ever seen. They forget that his failure to catch Bin Laden has done more to embolden the terrorists than anything Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid could ever hope to achieve. They forget that the likes of Reagan, Cheney and Rumsfeld helped create Al-Qaida in the first place by training and equipping Islamic mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and then radicalized them by letting Afghanistan slip into anarchy as soon as the Soviets withdrew. They forget that Bush has done absolutely nothing to pressure the Saudis and Pakistanis into closing the Madrassas (religious schools), where the next generation of Islamic terrorists are being radicalized. They forget that Bush's incompetent handling of Iraq has increased Iran's prestige and influence in the region and left us looking weak and impotent.

No wonder they want to link Democrats with Al-Qaida. It's a convenient way to divert attention from their own record of incompetence and hubris.

This vile and sickening attempt to link Democrats with the terrorists shows how little these morons really understand. Their logic, such as it is, supposes that because Al-Masri says something nice about Democrats then all Democrats must be de facto terrorist sympathizers. This is a bit like saying that because Ted Bundy liked the Beatles, Paul McCartney must sympathize with serial killers.

The "Democrats equals Terrorists" tactic shows the wingnuts for the cowardly, hateful and wilfully ignorant creatures they really are. Al-Masri knew exactly what he was doing when he issued his statement. He knew precisely how the wingnuts would react.

Has it ever occurred to these mindless morons that perhaps Al-Masri was engaging in a little bit of political spin? I mean, he is hardly going to demoralize his followers by describing the election as a major defeat for Al-Qaida, is he? If he is reading PowerLine or Rush Limbaugh's transcripts, he must be laughing his pants off.

The reaction of certain elements on the right to al-Masri's statement demonstrates their immaturity and serves as a poignant illustration of exactly why they have so completely botched the so-called war on terror. They are allowing their emotions and feelings to be manipulated by the playground taunts of a thug, and their gleeful reaction to his comments plays right into his hands. Are they prepared to let his rantings define our foreign policy? Are we expected to change our behavior every time one of these lunatics says something scary? Well, perhaps Rush Limbaugh and his brainwashed followers might, but the majority of the American people are not jelly-spined pussies, as they demonstrated last Tuesday.

I have always maintained that the reason Al-Qaida attacked us on 9/11 was not to destroy our way of life. They are not stupid enough to think that crashing a few airplanes would bring us to our knees. On the other hand, they knew exactly how we would react to such an attack. Their motive was to provoke a massive overreaction that would bring U.S. troops into the Middle East and provoke the war of civilizations that Bin Laden (and, unfortunately, many on the American right) had been hungering for. If that was their goal, then it was absolutely successful. Our reaction to 9/11, and particularly the misguided invasion of Iraq, has inspired possibly hundreds of disconnected terrorist cells throughout the west, many of which are homegrown.

The Bush era has been dominated by juvenile hatemongering, fear-based politics, a simplistic foreign policy and ideological hubris. For the past few months, Bush and other GOP leaders blitzed the American people with warnings that a Democratic victory would be a victory for the terrorists. Well, the American people have now spoken and they clearly disagree with such childish bluster. There can be no greater expression of who and what we stand for than a free election in which Americans are free to express their views without fear of reprisal. That is what makes us better than the Islamists, although certain elements on the right would clearly prefer us to have permanent one-party rule where everybody is in mindless agreement with El Presidente. My advice to them is that if they hate democracy so much, they should head to Iran or North Korea where I'm sure their views will be welcomed.

Terrorists don't care whether we are Republicans, Democrats or Liebermans. They don't care whether we are Jews, Christians, Muslims or Atheists. They don't care whether we live in red states, blue states or purple states with yellow spots. They don't care what party runs Congress or lives in the White House. They don't care if Joe Lieberman crosses the aisle or if Jane Harman chairs the intelligence committee. These distinctions only matter to them insofar as they can be used to divide and demoralize us. Our freedom to hold elections and engage in free, open debate is the strongest weapon we have in our arsenal. But when one group of Americans starts associating another group of Americans with the enemy, then the enemy is able to use these accusations to convince its followers that many Americans actually sympathize with their cause.

Following Hugo Chavez's blustery address to the United Nations this September, in which he accused President Bush of being the devil, left wing Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) showed some class by defending the president, despite his fierce opposition to Bush policies. "You don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district and criticize my president," he told the Venezuelan dictator.

If these right-wingers (and I exclude Ed Morrissey here, who has reacted with maturity) had any class, they would be striking back at Al-Masri by stating that a Democratic congress will be as determined to fight terrorists as the Republicans. By linking Democrats to the terrorists, they are telling Al-Masri's supporters that they agree with him.

That is not only disingenuous, but it is childish, dangerous and represents a mindset that was soundly rejected by the American people last week.