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Posted on 04/02/2004 3:35:25 AM PST by Tom D.
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:51:25 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
From the moment the September 11 commission was authorized, the only important question was when it would propitiate the media gods. That moment has arrived. We have finally reduced the entire story of September 11, as always, to heroes and villains, winners and losers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Not only that, it will be televised, and no way can the media "spin" their way out of what will be perceived as the truth by the American people.
If only Bush would make her his running mate.
I agree with that too.
Bureaucrats supply the soldiers, develop the weapons, and analyze the intelligence to fight the wars. There are lots of bureaucrats in the Department of Defense.
There is a saying among knowledgeable warriors: Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.
Our administration did not cause 9-11. The Clinton administration did not cause 9-11. Al Queda caused 9-11. The only thing my administration caused was the destruction of terrorism.
Richard "20/20 hindsight" Clark the opportunist, some people celebrate the lowest common denominator.
Don't misunderestimate the media and their capactity to find Republian guilt in the most innocent of circumstances.
From the moment the September 11 commission was authorized, the only important question was when it would propitiate the media gods. That moment has arrived. We have finally reduced the entire story of September 11, as always, to heroes and villains, winners and losers.The malfeasance of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson as commander-in-chief of the Vietnam-era miltary precipitated a crisis in American politcs. Liberalism - journalism, the Democratic Party leadership - reacted to that crisis by abandoning its (always-halfhearted) support for military resistance to the impostition of Communist tyranny abroad and moving to outright opposition to military resistance to the impostition of Communist tyranny abroad.When this exercise is over, we will know very little important about September 11 that we didn't know on September 12.
Recall the famous phrase, "September 11 changed everything." What that meant is that September 11 changed the American mind about terror. ... After September 11 the president of the United States declared war on terror. He then established the fact of war, not merely the sentiment of war, by defeating the Taliban and Saddam Hussein with armies.
. . . over 30 years, an entire industry had grown up to work the terrorism problem. Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal were household names. And still the destruction of embassies, hotels, ships and finally skyscrapers continued.
. . . Amid the rubble and death of a September 11, it is everyone's instinct to say these agencies should have been focused on the problem laserlike and 24/7. That has never been and never will be -- short of war.
. . . After Mr. Bush's September declaration of war, the bureaucracies focused and functioned magnificently from Afghanistan to Baghdad. Policy. . . had the backing of the American people.
That shift did not merely imply Democratic abandonment of blanket respect for any American who manifested valor in service to the U.S. It did not merely imply the granting of amnesty for draft evasion. That shift implied the assignment of respect for the draft evader and contempt for valor when exerted under the leadership of a Republican president. The Democratic Party became the the party of the draft-evading Bill Clinton and the military-baiting John Kerry. And the party of bitter partisan emnity to much of American tradition in general. A party which is institutionally incapable of more than the sounding of "an uncertain trumpet" even if faced with violent challenge.
Such a party as that could not fail to produce a strong reaction in American society. In the first instance voluntary service in the military, and in the traditionally militantly nonpartisan officers' corps in particular, became strongly associated with disaffection with the Democratic Party - and thus with affinity for the Republican Party. The tradional, conservative South - institutionally Democratic since before the Civl War - changed more slowly but changed in the same way.
Such a party tears at the informal assumptions which make society cohere; it is essentially an anti-mainstream party. Such a party, to be blunt, is utterly dependent on maintaining, in the mind of each of half of the nation's voters an image at odds with reality (that image need not, unfortunately, be the same to every such voter). Such a party depends on massive PR support. With the support of "objective" journalism, that party has been able to agressively invert the meanings of words in order to prevent the electorate as a whole from seeing throug its image-making fog. "Liberalism" is "objective journalism." Scare quotes belong around "liberalism" because journalism has enabled its meaning to be be inverted from opposition to government regulation/high taxes to demand for precisely those things. Scare quotes belong around "objective journalism" for the obvious reason that journalism's "objectivity" is an egregiously tendentious, self-promoted, fiction.
Richard Clarke. . . . clearly thinks Mr. Bush's declared war was a mistake. . . .. . . Richard Clarke represents bureaucracy.. . . for all his reputation as a bull in the bureaucracy's china shop
Richard Clarke represents the avoidance of moral clarity. Richard Clarke is slippery and two-faced. Richard Clarke represents liberalism.
See also
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
What a fine article. Anyone who has not spent $15.00 to read Bill Gertz' book "Breakdown : How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11" is missing out on one thorough book that includes several highly classified documents and he also talks about the long term degradation of the CIA in particular, intensified by the political machinations of the Clinton administration.
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