The Favor

I agree with JMM that George Bush is a gift for Osama bin Laden, and that if we want real change in the White House in 2008 it'd be good to talk in those terms.

Democrats should just hit right back on how President Bush has been helping Osama bin Laden for almost six years. Sounds harsh. But it’s true. Consider the facts. President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming. President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein. So pretty much anything bin Laden does from here on out is on President Bush. And how about Iraq? President Bush has screwed things up so badly that he’s created a whole new generation of recruits for bin Laden. He’s created a whole new army for bin Laden. Not by being tough but by being stupid. And by being too much of a coward to admit his mistakes once it was obvious that the occupation of Iraq was helping bin Laden specifically and the jihadist agenda in general.

After half a decade, the verdict is pretty clear: President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama bin Laden has. He’s helped bin Laden at pretty much every turn — even if only by his own stupidity, incompetence and cowardice. And when the next big terrorist attack comes, we can thank President Bush for helping make it happen.

Indeed, bin Laden is alive and well; he may have planned the attack in Afghanistan at the base where Dick Cheney was staying a couple months ago. His movement can now operate independently of him as well, and the Iraq war has become a jihadist training ground. It's incredibly clear that George Bush is a great favor to Osama.

And now the top Republican candidates like Rudy Giuliani want to use this gift-giving as a model. If the Democrats are interested in winning they will tie all of these Republican candidates to the anvil that is George Bush's foreign policy, which has been completely discredited.

UPDATE: Even Karl Rove admits this, by the way, when he says that Iraq was bin Laden's idea. He doesn't know how right he is.