Must Read from Joe Conason: Knee Jerks

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Knee Jerks

By Joe Conason
January 5, 2010

The latest atrocity attempted by Al Qaeda seems to be yet another example of history reprising a great tragedy as farce. What make the misadventure of the underpants bomber on Flight 253 seem darkly ridiculous, however, is not only his incompetence in setting himself on fire, but the hysteria and hypocrisy of the reactions set off on the right by his painful squib. Then again, the Republican exploitative response to terror is as predictable as Al Qaeda’s urge to kill.

That partisan reflex dates back to the original tragedy of 9/11, when Karl Rove, political boss of the Bush White House, decided that the remarkable bipartisan national unity of the months that followed the day of infamy should be torched to advance Republican midterm election prospects. His party commenced a scurrilous campaign that compared Democrats to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while somehow blaming the Clinton administration for the president’s failure to notice neon warnings of an imminent Al Qaeda attack. The Rove strategy was sinister and frankly cynical, but highly effective—and permanently destructive.

In recent days, a conservative columnist has described Flight 253 as the contemporary Pearl Harbor. A claque of Republicans has expressed outrage that the slightly charred suspect, a wealthy young Nigerian, will be tried in a courthouse rather than a military tribunal—forgetting how many times the Bush administration treated terrorists precisely the same way. A chorus of Republican bloggers has linked the underpants bomber to terror masterminds supposedly released by President Obama from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, repeating a false TV report (and ignoring the fact that President Bush released hundreds more Gitmo detainees).

If we lived in a confident, politically mature society, we would be able to see that tabloid hysterics and direct-mail posturing will do nothing to defeat Al Qaeda. We would understand why President Obama prefers to engage Islam in dialogue rather than demonize a billion Muslims. We would realize that even as we endeavor to destroy a nihilistic enemy that perverts faith, we ought to maintain our composure, our values and, at the very least, our capacity for honest debate. But that would require an opposition loyal to something bigger than itself.

http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/knee-jerks