Way back in 2004, Bush told a Florida audience, “[John] Kerry said, and I quote, ‘The war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law enforcement operation.’ (Audience boos.) I disagree…. After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and supporters declared war on the United States of America — and war is what they got. (Audience applauds.)
Bush, pleased with himself and the reaction, repeated the attack again and again and again. The point was obvious — paint an image in which Bush battles terrorists with the most powerful military in the world, while Kerry fights al Qaeda with cops and lawyers.
And now, we get to have the exact same fight all over again.
Aggressively moving to shift the debate away from domestic issues to national security, the McCain campaign hit Obama with some of the most incendiary language of the campaign, accusing Obama on a conference call with reporters moments ago of having a “September 10th mindset.”
The latest attack, which has strong echoes of the tactics Bush used against John Kerry four years ago and that Republicans used against Dems in 2006, comes in response to comments Obama made yesterday to ABC News about the attackers of the World Trade Center in 1993.
In the interview, Obama suggested that the failure to try Guantanamo detainees was harming American credibility in the Muslim world, adding that the 1993 attackers had been dealt with in accordance with the Constitution and that “they are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.”
McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said Obama “is a perfect manifestation of a September 10th mindset,” and added if Obama “did receive that 3 A.M. call, his response would be to call the lawyers in the Justice Department.”
Even by the standards of the McCain campaign, this is unusually stupid.
In the reality the rest of us live in, Obama has repeatedly emphasized an aggressive counter-terrorism policy, focused on intelligence gathering, law-enforcement operations, and military operations. Indeed, when Obama talked about pursuing al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, McCain and his allies suggested that Obama was being overly aggressive.
Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar in the Bush administration, responded to the McCain camp’s nonsense.
“I’m frankly disgusted at my friends on the McCain campaign,” Clarke said, perhaps being a bit optimistic in describing those folks as still being “friends” of his. Clark referred to the McCain camp’s claim that Dems only favor a law enforcement approach to terrorism, and accused McCain advisers of “completely and utterly distorting the record of that party.”
“They said that about Bill Clinton,” Clarke continued. “They said that about John Kerry. And now they’re saying it about Barack Obama. I’d like them to show where in the record Barack Obama has favored only a law enforcement approach.”
I find the whole basis for the attacks against Obama truly bizarre, in large part because I thought we’d already resolved this.
A terrorist plot was disrupted in Germany last fall thanks to the combined efforts of intelligence gathering and law-enforcement operations. The alleged plot at JFK airport was discovered after the combined efforts of intelligence gathering and law-enforcement operations. The alleged plot at Fort Dix was discovered after the combined efforts of intelligence gathering and law-enforcement operations. The alleged British hijacking plot was discovered after the combined efforts of intelligence gathering and law-enforcement operations. The list goes on and on.
We catch the bad guys, prevent terrorism, and save lives through these combined efforts. Is this not obvious, even to conservative Republicans? Or does McCain’s team think the only way to protect our interests is to invade foreign countries?
Best of all, McCain concluded that Obama “wants to take us back to the bad old days of going after terrorists with prosecutors rather than predators.” Ironically, when Obama talked about going after terrorists with predators, McCain criticized him for it.
The political reality of this is that McCain is losing, his campaign is feeling antsy, so the same tired conservatives are trying to use the same tired scare tactics, hoping voters won’t realize that a) they’ve heard all of this before; and b) the attacks don’t actually make any sense.
I’d almost feel sorry for the McCain gang if their demagoguery wasn’t so ridiculous.