About Last Night



UPDATE: No clue why the embedded videos aren't working, here's the direct link in case they don't come back up.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=210190

Bill O'Reilly went on the Daily Show last night, and behaved much as was to be expected. Rather than losing my mind over the asinine quality of most things leaving that man's mouth, I am going to focus on an argument that is time-tested among Republicans which is now starting to re-surface as a pre-emptive reason to fear/hate Obama: the "we haven't been attacked again" bit. It's at 3:50 or so in the video above, and mentioned so passingly that I was floored.

The argument goes as such: after 9/11, we've never seen another terrorist attack on our soil; thus, George W. Bush has protected us.

Let's take a look at this. On September 11, 2001, we were attacked on our own soil by Al Qaeda. It is now November 14, 2008, and they haven't come back here. This is, presumably, due to the valiant "fight-them-over-there-so-we-don't-fight-them-here" strategy of kicking ass in the war on terror. I don't buy it.

On February 26, 1993, we were attacked on our own soil by Al Qaeda. Does a single Republican give Clinton credit that we were never attacked again on our own soil under his watch? Didn't think so. In fact, they'll say that Clinton did nothing at all to stop 9/11 instead. That is, of course, despite having caught and brought to justice those responsible for the '93 attack as well as preventing the Millenium bombing as well as authorizing the assasination of Bin Laden. But I digress...

It took Al Qaeda eight and a half years to strike the same target twice when, according to the Republicans, nothing at all was being done to stop them (at least nothing on the scale of W.). Now, when we presumably are beating the piss out of these guys, the fact that they haven't come back in just over seven years is reason for jubilation on the right. If we did nothing at all it would take them longer to come back than it has. Why are they celebrating this as a Bush win? Still, I think there's a bit more to the argument that needs picking at.

There are terrorist attacks that go on all the time, against Americans, in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we first went into Iraq we even called them terrorist attacks, though now we've replaced that terminology with insurgency. We have more dead over there than they killed over here, and guess what? They killed us over there, too. In many cases, they killed us at our own military bases, which technically constitute our soil (not to mention any attack at all on our troops before sovreignty was handed back over to the Iraqis). So, in other words, we have been attacked since 9/11. A whole hell of a lot.

In short, this argument is not only historically misleading, but it's also complete bullshit.

One last thing, though I don't normally quote partisan sources, I want to point out a Mr. Michael Glitz over at the Huffington Post who has an interesting take on the likely hypocrisy of the Republican party should something happen on Obama's watch:

"The Democrats took 9-11 as a sign to rally around a President whose election victory was suspect at best and give him their full support. The Republicans are already signaling that the moment any disaster might strike they're going to attack Obama as 'weak' on defense and the good of the country be damned."

One more last thing, if you really want to see how far out of touch the right and FOXNews have become, take a look at the tail-end of O'Reilly's interview where he insists he's holding a stuffed panda that is clearly not a panda (5:50 mark).



UPDATE: The direct link.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=210191

Also, in one of those funny-because-it's-true moments, what does the GOP do when they need to figure out why people think they're out of touch? They go on a cruise.