It’s only Wednesday, and we’re already seeing more signs this week that despite Karl Rove’s resignation, the hard sell on the Long War continues to ratchet up.
A few days ago I said that the hard sell on the Long War was a three-pronged assault on reason. It was a nasty combination of twisted wingnut appeals to “logic”, “shame”, and “fear”.
This week, the public is being hit hard on all three.
First we have the military noise machine hitting on the “logic”. This argument basically goes “despite all you hear in the press about Iraq being a disaster, everything is perfectly fine.”
The U.S. military is expressing hope that the recent troop buildup in Iraq is making strides as commanders point to the American death toll in the war zone — the lowest monthly total since November.
As of Wednesday, 77 U.S. troops were killed in July, a striking drop from earlier this year when spring brought the worst three-month period for U.S. troop deaths since the war began: 104 in April, 126 in May and 101 in June.
“Any time you are talking about coalition forces being safe, we gladly welcome that and hope to see it continue as a trend, that due to our operations the level of violence and level of attacks against coalition forces goes down,” said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, according to Reuters.
See, less US troops are dying, so “logically” we’re winning in Iraq. Our troops are now “safer” so it’s okay to keep them in “safer” areas of Iraq to continue the Long War. And who determines what the generals call safe? Why, the White House. So much for an objective view of the war from the generals, they’re not just making the kool-aid, they are passing it out to the thirsty public.
Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.
And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.
On the “shame” front, the right-wing blogosphere is doing its best to attack the Democrats, continuing to say that because of the “logic” of our victory, the Democrats are toast in 2008.
The Democrats, after spending the winter, spring and early summer frantically calling to get out of Iraq as fast as their little feet could carry them, are now, as autumn approaches, demonstrating their Olympic-class backpedaling skills.
By winter (with the complicity of the drive-by media — hat tip to Rush), the Democrats hope to expunge the historic record of their failure of war nerve this spring. This is the moment for Republicans — from the president, to the candidates for president, to the incumbents and challengers for offices all the way down to dog catcher (and especially dog catcher) to remind the public of the springtime Democratic Party defeatism and lost nerve.
They should be inspired to follow the immortal advise of Gen. Patton to his troops regarding what they should do to the Nazi enemy: “We are going to hold them by the nose and kick them in the a– … we are going to go through them like crap through a goose.” (Of course, the Democrats are only the domestic opposition, not the enemy. In American politics we have no American enemies — only philosophical opponents — I mean that):
The leadership of the Democratic Party has, by their public words this spring, disgraced themselves for a generation. Republicans have the right — and the duty — to engrave in the public mind the springtime Democratic perfidy and cowardice in the face of the enemy.
The argument that Democrats aren’t “serious on national security” has been upgraded to “Democratic perfidy and cowardice”. The stakes have suddenly gotten a lot higher with September 15th now but a month away. The twisted “logic” has allowed the even more twisted “shame” aspect to be played out…but of course the most effective method of selling the Long War continues to be “fear.”
This aspect too has been upgraded from “The Terrorists will follow us home if we leave” argument to “Millions of Iraqis will die if we leave” to “The Terrorists are already among us!”
NEW YORK – Citizens who quietly band together and adopt radical ways — not just established overseas terrorist groups like al-Qaida — pose a serious threat to American security, a new police analysis has concluded.
The New York Police Department report, to be released Wednesday, describes a process in which young Muslim immigrants, frustrated with their lives in their adopted country, slowly adopt a philosophy that puts them on the path to jihad. The men meet and share ideas in mosques, in bookstores and over the Internet, it says.
Police officials say the report warns that potential terrorists are difficult for law enforcement to detect because they blend in well. It also argues that more intelligence gathering is needed to thwart terror plots at their earliest stages.
Note the fear aspect also contains hints of both the shame and logic angles. Selling the Long War is taking a combined arms approach. This old argument, that the terrorists are hiding among us, is certainly nothing new…
I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. They act as if the threat is not real and is only a blip caused by a post 9/11 overreaction by George Bush, thus ignoring virtually all of Western history since the year 800, not to mention the overwhelming demographic changes of recent decades. (John Edwards – interestingly an opponent of gay marriage – recently called the “War on Terror” a bumper sticker. At least, he’s consistent.) The very people most threatened by the ideology of Islamism and the institution of Sharia law – gays, women, freethinkers – are often the very people least likely to defend themselves against it. What we have on our Left is a culture of denial equal to, if not exceeding, the German Jews of the 1930s and one that has taken the canard about all politics being local to an almost ludicrous extreme.
…but the intensity and the combined arms approach to bundle fear with twisted logic and shame is, and so is the need to use the three to further not just staying in Iraq for eternity, but to justify expanding the war to Iran.
The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.
The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.
The run up to September 15th looks to be a brutal PR blitz of staggering proportions designed to ensure that we stay in Iraq for the decades that the Long War will entail. No resistance will be tolerated. No effort will be spared to make it happen. More than ever, we need to get the message out that the public is being played again. It’s 2002 all over again, and this time if we fall for it, this country and our way of life are over.