John McCain appeared on The Daily Show this week, and Jon Stewart raised a point that conservatives generally don’t want to hear. “Don’t you think, these past few years, in terms of a recruiting tool for bin Laden and al Qaeda, I mean, let’s say al Qaeda is trying to fire up their base,” Stewart said. “Isn’t President Bush kind of, and our policies there, their Rev. Wright? Isn’t [Bush] the guy they throw out there and inflame their base and get support? Don’t you think he’s actually been okay for al Qaeda?”
McCain dodged the question, talking about a “transcendent evil,” not about whether we’ve inadvertently helped those who wish to commit acts of “transcendent evil.” But Stewart’s point is incontrovertible — Bush administration policies have helped al Qaeda raise money and recruit new members.
The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb was unimpressed.
As to whether Bush is a recruiting tool for terrorists — who cares? Al Qaeda was recruiting before Bush was in office and they will continue to do so after he’s gone. The important thing is that we keep killing those recruits. Eventually, one side will give up. And if Obama wins in November, we know which side that will be.
Yes, we’ve reached an unnervingly odd point in the political debate over counter-terrorism. The right, in the midst mind-numbingly stupid smears of Democrats, is now indifferent to the growth of the terrorist network responsible for 9/11.
Whereas undermining al Qaeda and making it smaller used to be a hgh national priority, the Weekly Standard — one of the most prominent outlets for conservative thought in the country — is publishing items arguing that Americans need not care if our policies create more terrorists and become a boon to al Qaeda. “Who cares?”
I knew that far too many conservatives had gone around the bend on national security and counter-terrorism policy, but I never really expected to see this in print.
Spencer Ackerman’s take sounds right to me:
I love it! Let the Standard keep proving that neoconservatism doesn’t care about the people who attacked the U.S. on 9/11, except as a pretext for bringing about its cherished war. The grown-ups will come around to a foreign policy that can actually destroy this jihadist malignancy, and the neos will be left to snivel and whine like the irrelevant, discredited distraction they are.
Cato’s Justin Logan added:
Do they edit this stuff before putting it up? By this logic, why don’t we airdrop a bunch of copies of Penthouse Letters into the Kabaa? After all, al Qaeda will continue recruiting whether we do it or not. Or maybe we could declare war on all of Islam. After all, al Qaeda was recruiting before we declared it. Or maybe we could send Senator McCain’s “moral compass and spiritual guide” onto al Hurra to tell Muslims that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” After all, it’s not like al Qaeda’s not recruiting today.
The next time someone asks why we can’t take the right seriously on national security policy anymore, remind them of Michael Goldfarb and The Weekly Standard.