In May, I wrote the following spoof:
News reports from Pakistan claim a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden speaks favorably about a McCain presidency:
Inshallah, we’re looking forward to four more years of Bush policies with this McCain fellow. George Bush has been good for us and we think McCain could be even better. Imagine, he might even widen the war against us and persuade more shahids to join our cause. McCain, we wish you well in ‘08.
John McCain said he reserved the right to jump into bed with any Christian evangelical and Islamist slimeballs crazy enough to endorse him.
It’s taken six months, but reality has finally caught up with me:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering…
With all the Republicans who’ve jumped ship and endorsed Obama, you’d think John would’ve welcomed anyone who jumped on his bandwagon. But this is an endorsement he could do without.
The campaign’s overly-categorical and essentially non-responsive reply exemplifies why McCain is completely out of touch with current political reality:
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
Yes, he’s been claiming that and lots of other similarly dubious or flat out wrong statements about Islamic radicalism for the entire campaign. But Americans no longer believe it and no amount of repeating it will get them to change their minds (unless Rick Davis, Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt can arrange for an Al Qaeda attack the weekend before the election as Al Qaeda did before a Spanish national election some years ago).
Nicholas Kristof carries his critique to the subject Islamofascism, a coinage inspired by Jewish neocons:
…An exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests…
He closes his column by returning to the reason Al Qaeda has “endorsed” McCain:
Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.
It has taken eight long years. But Americans have finally begun to regain their senses about the “war on terror” and realized the horrible excesses engineered by the Bush-McCain Republican juggernaut. It will take a lot more than McCain shreying “radical Islamic terrorism” to make them lose their senses again and go for his pandering.
Oh come on Richard. If you did a little more research you would have seen that the “endorsement” came from a post on a jihadi web site. On the other hand, Iranian leaders openly support Obama calling him more “rational”, as does Hamas, such as conducting a phone campaign from Gaza City.
Furthermore, you don’t seem to appreciate the fact that there have been no attacks on the US homeland thanks to the war on terror. Massive attacks were stopped early, like blowing up wall street, the Brooklyn bridge, the Library Tower, and 10 jetliners with liquid explosives, to name a few. Islamist terrorists are killing tens of thousands of Americans, you just don’t see it because Bush and his war on terror have been so successful. Similar to how the Palestinians actually killed 20,000 Israelis in the Intifada, except that Israel prevents 95% of attacks so “only” 1000 were killed.
@Yoni:
I didn’t need to do any more research because that fact was explicitly mentioned in the article. How else would you presume that Kristof could claim that Al Qaeda endorsed McCain if it wasn’t post to a “jihadi website?”
That’s a really fresh viewpt. Given the absolute ineptitude of the Bush Administration in everything it’s put its hand to, you actually credit it with keep the U.S. safe from a terror attack. And regarding the alleged conspiracies you mention–precisely none of those have led to any successful federal prosecutions. Possibly the suspect in the Brooklyn Bridge case copped a plea, I can’t remember that precisely. So if these were legitimate Islamic terror plots why couldn’t the Bushies get a conviction?
Huh?? You actually wrote that terrorists ARE KILLING tens of thousands of Americans. Did you actually write that? If you really intended to, on what basis do you make that claim?
I think you meant to say that there WOULD BE tens of thousands of American deaths were it not for Bush’s war on terror. But that’s not what you did say. What you did say is both a lie and patent nonsense.
According to Wikipedia Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the Brooklyn Bridge plot. He was also connected to Nuradin Abdi who was arrested and sentenced to 10 years with deportation back to Somalia for planning to blow up shopping centres. This is just from a basic search.
Many more attacks have been prevented, and obviously that is what I meant, in terms of the fact that to some people (ie you) it seems like there’s no war going on, but there IS, it’s just that we’re stopping the other side from attacking. Just picture two armies facing each other and firing at each other and one side has a special device that makes the bullets of the other side drop to the ground before they reach their targets. Get it??? That’s what I meant.
The election in Spain on March 14, 2004 was actually won by the opposition PSOE, largely due to the Aznar govt’s handling of the Madrid train bombings 3 days earlier. If that’s the role model (and with Katrina in mind, too), arranging for something similar would be a rather dumb thing to do for Davis & Co…
@fiddler: My understanding is that the Spanish people turned against the Conservative gov’t because it claimed the bombing was the work of Basque separatists, rather than Al Qaeda. The gov’t so botched the early stages of the investigation that no one believed a word they were saying & the entire electorate turned against them.
I would guess if there were an Al Qaeda bombing before the election & Bush botched it just as badly it would turn the McCain campaign from a rout into a debacle.
@Yoni:
Don’t rely solely on Wikipedia as your sole research source. The fact is that Faris copped a plea. Yes he got 20 yrs. But he was never convicted by a jury. And if Faris hadn’t copped a plea he likely would’ve walked since the government has hardly ever succeeded in gaining convictions of any terror suspects they’ve prosecuted. In addition, the govt. has admitted using illegal NSA intercepts against him which may still get the case thrown out on appeal.
Ooooh, cool. Is this some kind of African voodoo like holy shirts that stop bullets if you wear them in battle? I think we ought to order this for our troops in Iraq.
You’re spouting nonsense as usual.
Gee, I could have sworn that “the transcendent challenge of our time” is that the U.S. is $10 trillion in debt and that its economy is going down the tubes – maybe I need to get out more.
Unfortunately you all are missing the point. The point is whether or not this war is making the US safer, Alqaeda wants a president that will continue to put this country in more debt and continue to initiate conflicts in other countries. The motivation behind their attacks was to cause the US to fall into a depression and to fall from power which certainly is not too far from possible at this point. They want countries to turn on us and more hatred to spread because that helps their cause. Countries who claim to support Obama for being rational are countries who are looking for a peaceful solution, not terrorist organizations recruiting extremists. This war has not helped our image in the world and Mccain is certainly not going to change that by continuing Bush’s war policies or striking countries with out support or permission.
I’d like to see the endorsement for myself. Is it posted in English? I had the phrase “reverse psychology” in mind when I heard about it.
I think you don’t know what were fighting for.You say “Countries who claim to support Obama for being rational are countries
who are looking for a peaceful solution” I believe someone said that 69 years ago. A man by the name of Adolph Hitler
telling it to Chamberlain.Need i say more.
@Doug:
Indeed not. You’ve said quite enough though I’m not sure what it was precisely that you were trying to say.