Well, we have the apologists that blame America for terrorist hatred who would actually pay reparations to anyone who perceives they have been wronged by US imperialism.
As I've written elsewhere: If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that America's global military interventions have come to an end. I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -- oddly enough -- a foreign country. Then I would reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be enough money. One year of our military budget is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's one year. That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House.
yellowtimes.org
There are the conspiracy theorists that believe it is all just one big lie waiting to be unearthed.
The Left media figures who are now strutting around with their "anti-war" poses vis a vis Iraq and picking apart every word from the Bush administration are being flagrantly hypocritical if they do not also halt their own war of silence and join in the urgent grassroots effort to investigate and expose the still obscured truth about 9/11. The lies from the Bush administration about 9/11 prior warnings and the impossible inconsistencies in the official narrative about the 9/11 "terrorist" plot are every bit as serious and deserving of attention as the farrago of B.S. and disinfo being served up in attempts to justify the new Iraq war. There is a HUGE double-standard being applied here.
questionsquestions.net
There is the pan-Arab state of denial concerning the WOT
The Arab media deny most of the terrorist threat facing the world today, and excuse the rest. For example, in the wake of a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem on November 21, 2002, several Egyptian newspaper editorials hailed the suicide attack as a "valiant, courageous operation" and "most honorable mission" (Al-Gumhuriyya, 11/22/02), and described the noncombatant, civilian victims as "terrorists" (Al-Akhbar, 11/22/02).
We can hardly expect the support of the Arab masses in the war on terror when their most respected journalists and intellectuals are apologists for terrorism. The Arab public readily accepts such apologetics and blame-shifting as fact, hungrily consuming them so long as the blame can be shifted elsewhere, and Arabs are not forced to take any responsibility for either the current state of affairs or the radicalism it fosters.
nationalreview.com
Daniel Pipes wrote an article last Wednesday that asks the question:
Are Democrats in Denial About 9-11?
By Daniel Pipes
Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is danielpipes.org.
For about a year, Republicans and Democrats agreed on the need vigorously to prosecute the war on terror.
No longer. Nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror.
Howard Dean , replying to a question that if bin Laden should be caught, whether to put him to death: "I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials." (Some days later, under criticism, Dr. Dean shifted his position, saying "as an American I want to see he gets what he deserves, which is the death penalty.")
Richard Gephardt : "I never felt it was inevitable that we had to go to war."
John Kerry : President George W. Bush wrongly "rushed into battle."
George Soros : "the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. … Crime requires police work, not military action."
William Sloan Coffin : After 9/11, the U.S. government should have vowed "to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force."
Fully to appreciate the significance of the Democrats' views requires some background: Although Islamist violence against Americans began in 1979, for 22 years the U.S. government, regardless of which party was in charge, insisted on reducing the Islamist threat to its criminal component.
Because evidence against Iran would not have passed muster in a court of law, for example, the destruction of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killing 63, went unavenged. The U.S. response in 1998 to two embassy bombings in East Africa, killing 224, was to track down the perpetrators, haul them before a court in New York, win convictions, and put them away. There was no effort to dismantle the command and control structure, the financial institutions, the cultural milieu, or the political ideology that had bred the violence.
Then came September 11 and a nationwide realization that the country faced not just crime but also a military threat. That very evening, Mr. Bush declared a "war against terrorism." A war, note — not a police action.
This new approach quickly had large implications. One was deploying the military to destroy the Taliban regime. Another (via the Patriot Act) was pulling down the "firewall" dividing law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
This latter may sound technical, but it greatly enhanced American capabilities. For years, legal investigators pursued information that their colleagues in the intelligence agencies already had. It was like "having your best football players sitting on the bench when you are having your butts beat," notes Barry Carmody, an FBI agent who worked on the Sami Al-Arian terrorism case. Then the Patriot Act was passed and "Everything changed." Now, the authorities could "gamble with 52 cards, not half the deck," Mr. Carmody said.
"Holy moly! There's a lot there!" was how another FBI agent, Joe Navarro, characterized the flood of new information in the Al-Arian case. He described getting hold of it as "one of those awesome moments."
Two months ago, the undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, formally contrasted the pre- and post-9 /11 approaches: think back, he suggested, to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to the attacks on Khobar Towers in 1996, on the U.S. East African embassies in 1998, on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. When such attacks occurred over the last decades, U.S. officials avoided the term "war." The primary response was to dispatch the FBI to identify individuals for prosecution. Recognizing the September 11 attack as war was a departure from the established practice. It was President Bush's seminal insight, the wisdom of which I would say is attested by the fact that it looks so obvious in retrospect.
Obvious for a while, yes. Now, key Democrats repudiate this insight and insist on a return to the pre-9 /11 dispensation.
Doing so would amount to a momentous step backwards, however. This new kind of war involves criminality, to be sure, but it still is war. To unlearn the painful lesson of September 11 is a good way to lose that war.
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The outcome depends on our people facing the facts head on and I wish it weren't so, but I strongly believe that unclewest's words are a warning that too many Americans seem to be ignoring. We will lose our nation and everything good it stands for if this very serious threat is explained away, or worse yet, ignored.
I speak these words reluctantly but view them as necessary to our survival as a nation. We cannot marginalize this threat.
M |
