Dennis Hastert Serves Up Red Meat to his Fans at Red State

Yep. That Denny Hastert, former wrestling coach, ethically challenged real estate speculator, pedophile enabler and Tom DeLay’s lapdog. Here he is (or here is one of his staffers whom he hasn’t yet thrown under the bus) in all his best righteous fury trying to stir up the Right Wing Blogosphere to go vote Republican. In it he repeats every hoary old GOP talking point about Democrats endangering America you’ve ever heard:

Democrats think that there must be something we’re doing to exacerbate all this; that there must be something they could do that would make Islamist suicide bombers pack up their bomb vests and stop threatening us. […]

[Democrats] think, in short, that 9/11 was an aberration, not part of a pattern. This is nothing short of insane. After the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993, America was terrorized in quick succession: the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, the 2000 attack against the USS Cole. All of these attacks – more brazen and costly than the one before – were launched against the United States while we pursued the weak, indecisive, pre-9/11 policies the Democrats still support.

To Republicans, the lessons of 9/11 are clear. We are at war with Islamist extremists and have been since at least as long ago as the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993. … The goal of our enemies – global domination through murder, terror, and, at the earliest possible date, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction – was stated long before 19 young men hijacked four planes five Septembers ago. … They want, quite simply, to terror-bomb us and our values back to the Dark Ages. … As far as Republicans are concerned we are in a fight for our freedom and even our lives.

Whatever else anyone can say about the Republican security agenda, it has achieved its objective. Despite all predictions to the contrary, we have not witnessed a repeat of the 9/11 attacks on American soil. The Afghanistan Taliban, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, and tens of thousands of their most dangerous leaders and soldiers around the world have been erased. Libya’s terrorist regime has disarmed. Democratic movements have sprung up across the Middle East. Iran has been isolated. Three separate elections have been held in Iraq. We have taken the fight to the enemy before they can take the fight to American neighborhoods.

I know that’s a lot of blustering, blithering nonsense to wade through, so just concentrate for a moment on that last paragraph …

(cont.)
… There’s little truth there, but lot’s of truthiness. No, we haven’t been attacked on American soil again, because we put our troops in harm’s way in Iraq. If I were a terrorist why kill us over here, when it’s so much easier to kill and maim thousands of Americans over in Iraq, closer to their home base. Besides, Iraq is both a great training ground for terrorist troops and an even better source of recruitment. In short fighting them over there hasn’t made us safer, and that’s not just my ill informed conjecture, that assessment comes straight from our intelligence community.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. …

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

Yes, we are so much safer now. Not. Contrary to Mr. Hastert’s claims, defeating Hussein hasn’t been a net positive on the security scale. Hussein wasn’t in position to harm us, he had no WMD’s and he hated Al Qaeda as much as we did. His Baathist regime was a nasty one, but it’s safe to say more Iraqis have died in the last 3 and 1/2 years of invasion and occupation by our troops than would have died had we left well enough alone and concentrated on capturing Bin Ladin and other Al Qaeda figures.

The fact that a corrupt Republican controlled Congress has failed to pass vital homeland security measures regarding port security, and security for chemical and nuclear power facilities, and even aviation security, among others, is also a notable failure on their part which has contributed to our lack of security from terrorist threats.

As for the Taliban being “erased,” sad to say, that’s one of Hastert’s bigger whoppers:

Five years after a determined US-led offensive ousted them from power in Kabul, the Taliban is on the path of resurgence in Afghanistan in total defiance of the Western military might.

The militia is virtually calling the shots in Afghanistan’s southern and eastern provinces, which is more than a half of the beleaguered nation, halting its reconstruction and development.

The writ of President Hamid Karzai remains confined to Kabul and major cities of the northern half despite the backing he has of the West. With more and more of their soldiers dying, Western countries are under pressure to quit Afghanistan.

Now let’s consider Hastert’s claim that democracy is breaking out all over the Middle East thanks to President Bush and the Republican Party. Suffice it to say, that’s at best, disengenuous. Indeed, our biggest allies (outside Israel) in the Middle East are tyrants, oppressive monarchs, and military dictators. Iraq is less a democracy than the beginnings of a Shi’ite theocracy with a de facto autonomous Kurdish region in the North. Not only is its government reliant on American military might but its official leadership is powerless to reign in the militias of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade which form the basis of their political support among the Shi’ite majority in the country.

So, to sum up, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are still around to provide Republicans with election year videos taunting us and threatening our imminent death and destruction. Afghanistan is a failed state, and so for all intents and purposes is Iraq. International Islamic based terrorism has “metastasized” around the globe thanks to Bush’s policies in Iraq, policies fully supported (some would say rubber stamped) by Republicans in Congress. We aren’t winning any war on terror, we’re spending ourselves into a mountain of debt while losing our souls and our constitutional rights in the process. All thanks to the policies of the Republicans in power.

But there is one thing I can agree on with Speaker Hastert: