Posted on 01/04/2010 9:47:56 AM PST by presidio9
The new year begins even worse than the last one ended. Only this time it isn't a debate about health care showing how lousy and mean partisan politics have become in America, it is the debate over the war on terrorism.
As usual it starts with a has-been like Dick Cheney acting as if that war is some party issue, as if the country is somehow more vulnerable to fanatics because Democrats have the White House and the Congress, as if all those who hate America and want to kill Americans see this tremendous opening to do that because Barack Obama is in charge now.
The idea is dumber than that television show about the Jersey Shore.
Still there was Cheney - who once was able to hide almost as well as Osama Bin Laden - out in front after a failed attempt to blow up a Northwest airplane on its way into Detroit on Christmas Day, like he wanted to be the first Obama hater to take his swings.
Only Cheney looks at a near tragedy on Christmas and sees opportunity. When he does, he doesn't just sound like some old crank in the park. He sounds like a bum.
But then partisan attacks like this are the real national pastime now in American politics, why we seem unable to get out of our own way even on the big things, why the constant war of words between the left and the right can somehow trivialize the most crucial issues of a world that becomes less safe by the day.
It is why politics in this country are as low as they have been since the Civil War. Why this has become an Un-Civil War America, wasting too much time being at war with itself.
So somehow Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his mosh pit of a brain are supposed to be Obama's fault. We are supposed to believe that the country really is at greater risk because a Democrat is in charge. Right. Cheney probably believes that if Al Gore had been President in September 2001, the terrorists would have taken down the Empire State Building, too.
This war isn't a party issue. It is an American issue, about our character as much as any politician's. Cheney gives an interview to Politico and worries about the "social transformation" he says Obama is trying to fashion. "Reclamation" is a better word, a reclamation of the values and ideals trampled by the previous administration.
Here is Cheney on Abdulmutallab's failure to set off his homemade explosive device on Northwest Flight 253:
"As I've watched the events of the last few days, it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think that if he has a low-key response to blow up an airliner ...we won't be at war."
Cheney used to be a much better liar than this. But that was back when he was selling this country a bill of goods on Niger and uranium and weapons of mass destruction. He must believe if he can sell all that, wholesale, he can rewrite his place in history, the mess he and George W. Bush left to this President.
He acts now as if the last administration were some kind of triumph, as if the economy collapsed on somebody else's watch the way the towers of the World Trade Center did. Maybe that is the most amazing lie of current American life, people actually expected to believe that Bush and Cheney's eight years in office are the good old days.
Now everything is supposed to be their way against Obama's, Republicans versus Democrats, liberals versus conservatives, the apparent goal to get the whole country shouting at one another as if it's nighttime cable TV, and every debate is supposed to sound like life-and-death.
Only the war on terrorism really is life-and-death.
And the security lines are longer than ever; we saw them again on Saturday afternoon as we flew back to the United States, everybody patted down at the boarding gate, every carry-on bag checked, item by item. It was the first flights after Sept. 11 all over again.
Maybe it isn't some breakdown in security in Nigeria, where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's flight originated, that makes Cheney sound more like an old fool than ever. Or that Abdulmutallab came as close as he did to exploding that bomb.
Maybe it is this: That the America Obama inherited is hated more now than it was pre-Bush. It isn't just the President who needs to be stronger than ever. It is all of us.
The Rat Party politics of "cut and run" and "I support our troops when they shoot their officers" MADE the war a party issue, dumbf***.
I don’t read Lupica when he writes about sports. Does he really think he’s relevant?
He must've been stoned in 1968 when domestic terrorists sides with the North Vietnamese Communists to blow up US armories, shoot police officers, and riot in our streets while praising serial killers like the Manson family.
I'll give you the refresher, those radicals are the ones who nurtured Obama's political career.
The PC that protects the underwear bombers at our expense is the Left’s fault, end of debate. The science is settled the Left has a mosh pit for brains.
Hasn’t Rush said sportswriters are the furthest left of all the libs in journalism?
Dick Cheney is hardly a has been, but rather a ‘still is’
and always will be.
Let’s see, Dick Cheney, executive official, Chief of Staff to the President, 10 year Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and 8 year Vice-President.
Compared to what? Oh, yeah minor state senator who wouldn’t take a stand on anything and 4 year US Senator who started running for president two years into his term.
I know who’s experience I’m going to listen to on national security.
If Cheney is such a “has been”, why are you worrying about what he has to say?
It isn't the party affiliation, it is the novice status of the person in the oval office.
Hillary Clinton's campaign ran a "who would you rather have in the White House to take a phone call at 3AM" advertisement.
Obama got the call about the Christmas bomber either 3 days or 3 hours after the event. And Dept. of Homeland Security claims the contingency plans worked because everyone relevant was contacted within 60-90 minutes.
Spin all you want, Mike.
What a dripping pantload!!!! Hey Mike Lupica - [Keith Olbermann wannabe], you can say what you want about Cheeney but from 9/11 to 11/08 we had no successful hijackings!!! We had terrorists captured and held OFFSHORE and we successfully prosecuted the war in Iraq to the point that we're able to seriously start withdrawing. Bambi's stubborn refusal to stop his golf game in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and Janet Napalatano's saying "the system worked" is no comparison.
It’s getting harder and harder to watch anything on ESPN with the volumne on these days.
ESPN is rapidly morphing into the MSNBC of sports channels.
If ESPN is not careful, FOX is going to steal every sports program except N Korean badminton championships.
An ACCIDENT would be tragic. This would be a deliberate HORRIFIC act.
And if he had accomplished he deed, we would have initially been told "no connection to terrorism" as we've still be told through official channels regarding the Ft. Hood massacre (a war crime).
I saw so many of his articles when Pres Bush was being attacked(not). Odumbo and his cohorts reap what they sowed.
Well, at least Lupica got one thing right in his article. Yet he can't see why.
How’s that Saudi “art therapy” rehabilitation program goin’?
Lupica is try to be hip and politically correct at the same time here. You can have any opinion you want about that show except that it is "dumb." It's getting huge ratings. The most unlikely of people are talking about it. In short, the idea was genius. You can call the people on the show dumb without calling all Italians dumb. You can laugh at the guidos who hang out down the Shore dumb and still respect Italians. I do. I have too many Italians to count in my family. I also had beach houses in Belmar, Spring Lake, and Pt Pleasant in my 20's (notice how I tried to get farther away from Bar A each successive year). In my experience, the guidos on the Shore behaved EXACTLY the way whiny liberals (expecially whiny Italian liberals) are now calling a racist stereotype.
...back to Yemen.
Gun enthusiasts refer to that as reloading.
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