Terrorism & Cornism
Sure, it may be low-hanging fruit I'm swiping, but David Corn's take on Peter Beinart is so absurdly wrong and on so many levels, I just can't leave it alone.
Let's start with this ...
The nature of the Al Qaeda threat is a key matter. Does it trump all else? Beinart says it does. And this is an interesting question. I view it with the perspective of one who works in an office a half a block from the U.S. Capitol, a possible target on 9/11. I take the threat of a terrorist attack quite personally and believe I have a very direct interest in neutralizing the mass murderers of Al Qaeda and their allies. But their goal, to be precise, is not to kill millions of Americans but to topple what they consider to be apostate regimes in the Middle East and create a pan-Arab theocratic state based on repressive principles of Islamic extremism. That?s nothing to be happy about. But it does define the challenge?and threat?in different terms. As a report recently produced by the Defense Science Board notes, "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies [in the Middle East]."To provoke argument?or in this case, counter-argument?it?s useful to ask, how does the Al Qaeda threat compare to the threat of global warming? Or the threat of global AIDS? Or the threat of drunk drivers? AIDS and DWIers kill far more people than Al Qaeda has. Global warming could lead to death, disease and dislocation affecting millions. Al Qaeda clearly has considered attacks with the most deadly weapons that could cause horrific casualties. Could it pull off such a strike? Perhaps. But should that possibility alone be the basis of a new political reality? And how close is Al Qaeda to establishing a repressive Islamic state in greater Arabia? Should that possibility cause us to put aside other pressing issues?
In other words ... we'll just sit out this whole war on terror thing while the GOP takes care of it. Get back to us when you want politicians to deal with drunk drivers.
It gets worse ...
Beinart truly trips up when he castigates liberals for being more concerned with the ills of Bush than the dangers of Al Qaeda....
For liberals, Beinart writes, ?Bush's war on terrorism became a partisan affair?defined in the liberal mind not by images of American soldiers walking Afghan girls to school, but by John Ashcroft's mass detentions and Cheney's false claims about Iraqi WMD.? But aren?t these images accurate? Cheney?s false claims and the war they fueled?sad to say?were more fundamental defining acts than the actions of those GIs in Afghanistan.
Emphasis mine. Corn thereby proves the very point he had attempted to disprove on the part of Beinart.
It goes without saying that Corn represents the very far left of progressive thought (to the point where I'd engage in all out debate over whether the phrase "progressive" even applies). But those are the folks that need to come to grips with this. Corn bemoans that Beinart left out a prescription for fighting the war on terror, also. It's a fair point, but not one that diminishes the point Beinart attempts to raise ... that the war on terrorism ought to be a central guiding principle for liberalism and that it represents a greater challenge to progressive ideals than anything Bush, Rove, or Ashcroft throw at us. The prescriptive need is something where more is warranted. But that's another debate.