Bobby Kennedy Jr. and James Fallows: "Blind into Baghdad" -- the leadup to war.
James Fallows said that the real threat to this country is not the terrorists -- the bigger threat to this country is if our reaction would result in destroying ourselves. And that is why FISA was such a bad bill -- it undermined the authority of the Constitutional prohibition against illegal searches and seizures. And the Republican notion that we are somehow the last bastion of Western Civilization against the influx of Islamic influences is wrong -- Fallows on today's Ring of Fire said that there has not been one single case of disloyalty within the American Muslim community -- they see themselves as Americans first and Muslims second. And they have been among the first to our defense in the face of terrorism by Bin Laden. And the support for Bin Laden even in the Middle East is now in single digits.
This helps explain why Gordon Brown is moving away from Tony Blair's claims that Western Civilization was in a life and death struggle against terrorism -- the fact of the matter is that this rhetoric simply has no basis in reality. Fallows said that we are destroying ourselves in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that the one fuel for terrorism is our perpetual occupation of Iraq, which he says breeds the next generation of terrorists dedicated to destroying our infrastructure. He said that terrorists are rarely interested in destroying governments -- they are more interested in using violence to make political statements.
Shifting to the leadup to war in Iraq, he said that he was an opponent to war because we would have to make Iraq to make them a 51st state in order for it to work. He asked why if this was so crucial that the administration was so casual about the whole thing. The Republicans, say Fallows, deluded themselves that the problem ever since Vietnam that the problem was a lack of resolve and that if they would just show more resolve than their predecessors, things would be better, and there would be a flowering of democracy similar to Eastern Europe.
Fallows said that it was appalling that the Bush administration did nothing to repair the infrastructure. In answer to RFK's question about why the press failed, Fallows responded that the press was radicalized by the 9/11 attacks and that they were prejudiced. He said that the journalists have no central source of authority, meaning that they do not reach people that don't agree with them.
On the military, Fallows said that the top levels of the military blindly went along with the wishes of the Bush administration. The problem was that every general who raised doubts about Iraq was fired. Weirdly, the military is now the peace faction in the administration; they are one of the leading opponents of air strikes against Iran, for instance. RFK said that we have exposed ourselves as paper tigers, meaning that we are not in position to effectively counter Iran and North Korea.
And not only that, Fallows said that it rewarded Iran and North Korea's belligerence; he said that they could act with impunity because of the fact that we were tied down in Iraq.
Obamathon
