General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRepukes/MSM to America: We have to panic, and we have to panic now.
Theres a new message coalescing around events in the Middle East, coming from Republicans, the media, and even a few Democrats: Its time to panic. Forget about understanding the complexities of an intricate situation, forget about unintended consequences, forget about the disasters of the past that grew from exactly this mind-set. We have to panic, and we have to panic now.
The centerpiece of every Sunday show yesterday was a sentence that President Obama spoke in a press conference on Thursday. He answered a question about going into Syria by saying that we shouldnt put the cart before the horse. We dont have a strategy yet. Naturally, Republicans leaped to argue that Obama wasnt actually talking about military action in Syria, but about dealing with the Islamic State (or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) more generally, and who knows what else. Many in the media took the same line. The first rule of a gaffe is that it should be taken out of context, and then the discussion should quickly be shifted away from whatever it was actually about to how, thus decontextualized, it might be perceived.
So on Meet the Press, Andrea Mitchell ignored the fact that the question Obama was answering was about U.S. military action in Syria, and asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is the president wrong to signal indecision by saying that we still dont have a strategy against ISIS? When that didnt elicit a sufficiently strong condemnation from Feinstein, Mitchell pressed on: Doesnt that project weakness from the White House? Obviously, theres nothing worse than signaling indecision or projecting weakness. Not even, say, invading a country without having a plan for what to do after the bombs stop falling.
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And lets be clear about this, too: the position of the people who pretend to be horrified at Obamas gaffe about not having a strategy for invading Syria is that we dont need a strategy. As Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) a man who wants to be commander in chief said, we ought to bomb them back to the stone age. Having a carefully constructed plan that takes into account not just what you want to blow up but what the consequences of American action will be in the coming months and years? Thats for wimps. We should just invade, yesterday if possible, and worry about all the messy stuff later. After all, it worked in Iraq in 2003, right?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/09/01/on-the-islamic-state-the-voices-counseling-panic-grow-louder/
jwirr
(39,215 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)They are growing the same crop, folks. I think a lot more folks see through the fog.
British PM reaction versus Obama, contrast and compare. Who creates and uses fear and who rejects it?
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)President Obama, not G.W., caught and killed OBL and has showed the strength of America without launching into another costly war America can't afford in blood and resources.
If Teddy and Diane "never met a war I couldn't profit off of" Feinstein want to fight ISIS militarily, they should take their overpaid behind, sign up, suit up, and ship out. Otherwise, they should sit down and shut-up as the shameless coward and war-profiteer that they are, respectively.
RoverSuswade
(641 posts)Is the amurcan attention span that short?
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)and a "Democrat" (Republican-Lite) as proof that we should.
Good thing that all polls show that NO citizen of the United States, both American and 'Murican, want another war. So pro-war corporate media are collectivly "strategorying" how exactly to go about changing American (and Murican) hearts and minds, and to convince us to sacrifice our sons and daughters for MIC and corporate profits.