Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

The Lies They Tell

9/11 Linked To Iraq, In Politics if Not in Fact – washingtonpost.com
The reason to emphasize al-Qaeda, aides said, is simple. “People know what that means,” said one senior official who spoke about internal strategy on the condition of anonymity. “The average person doesn’t understand why the Sunnis and Shia don’t like each other. They don’t know where the Kurds live. . . . And al-Qaeda is something they know. They’re the enemy of the United States.”

This actually makes no sense. Shocking, I know.

People don’t need to understand why the Sunnis and the Shia “don’t like each other”. They only need to know that there’s a civil war happening in Iraq and we’re in the middle of it — and that’s something the average person is quite capable of understanding. If Bush were to admit to that, though, there’d be quite a few more people asking why the hell we’re over there. So, in an attempt to make this huge waste of tax dollars and American (and Iraqi) lives more palatable, the Bush administration parades out the scary specter of al-Qaeda. Everyone has heard of al-Qaeda! Never mind that they’re a relatively minor player in Iraq. Never mind that they were a non-player in Iraq until our invasion set this mess in motion.

I’ve said it already so many times — but it really needs repeating. Terrorism is NOT A PHILOSOPHY. It’s a TACTIC. “The terrorists” are many and diverse. And they’re diffuse. Relatively few of “them” are in Iraq. The way to fight terrorism is a) to improve our national security, and b) to quit giving so many people such good reasons for hating us.