Happy Islamofascism Awareness Week!

Did you get a tree yet?

That's right, self-promoter David Horowitz has inaugurated a series of events on college campuses to raise awareness of the greatest threat to humankind, evah! Actually, "series of events" is probably a big strong, since barely half of the campuses Horowitz claimed to be holding events actually are:

We contacted those institutions, alerting them to the fact that their name was being used, and wondering what exactly was taking place. … It’s important to note though, after we contacted those institutions, most of those institutions indicated that no such events is taking place on those campus. And many contacted the sponsors and told them, “do not use my institution’s name in your campaign,” including some very renowned universities such as Yale and Princeton.

This is the most embarrassing thing to hit campus since parachute pants.

The truth is that there's almost no evidence of a Islamic jihadist movement within the United States. To the extent that it exists in other countries, it was on the verge of being crushed immediately after 9-11 until we turned attention to Iraq and did nothing but rescusitate it after that. The "awareness" should be on how unseriously the White House took the threat before the attacks, and how much they've done to make America less safe on the global stage after it.

Some of these nutcases actually think that we're going to be forced to convert to Islam en masse, with the country transformed into a giant arm of the caliphate. That's ridiculous, the Cold War was about 50,000 times more dangerous than a group of fanatics in caves. We have made US citizens more vulnerable to attack, by keeping them in the middle of a civil war in Iraq, but the idea that we're about to be taken over by an Islamic theocracy is absurd. It's not going to happen. And we shouldn't let those who profit from fear to demagogue us into another bloody war:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality...

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Planet Neocon, Fareed. And you spent some time hanging out there, too, as I remember. But welcome back.

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

I'm glad some of the elites ar seeing the insanity of those who claim that Iran is about to strike us any minute and that some son of a blacksmith who runs the traffic lights in Tehran is "worse than Hitler":



The only reason Iran has any leverage at all on us is because we have 165,000 Americans stationed in the country next door. The "awareness" should focus on getting us out of there.

Edwards On The Offense

I guess the consensus is that John Edwards didn't have a very good debate in New Hampshire, because he was the attack dog and he "didn't look Presidential." I don't agree. I think that conclusion has been drawn because he dared to utter the great unmentionable, something not even Dennis Kucinich feels comfortable enough to say.

Ed Kilgore remarks "Edwards' efforts to separate himself from Clinton and Obama by deriding the 'war on terror' (accurate as it is with respect to the terminology involved) is politically perilous, to say the least." This is actually what I think is the most significant aspect of Edwards' decision to take this bit of sloganeering on.

He had the balls to say what everyone knows is true (but only parenthetically) and is too afraid to say and ... he wasn't struck down by lightning [...] For years and years this kind of dogma has built-up among Bush administration critics that None May Say The Obvious about the "war on terror" lest they face dire, dire political consequences, but a party that doesn't have sufficient confidence in its national security chops to offer a really banal criticism of the Bush administration is bound to end up projecting that insecurity to voters in a way that's much more damaging than taking a 48 hour hit as the White House borrows the Clinton campaign's talking points.

That's right on so many levels. Barack Obama obviously got it, as within a day he released a statement acknowledging that the world is a more dangerous place thanks to the actions of this Administration, and that the war in Iraq has fueled terrorism around the world. It's not exactly where Edwards is, but it's certainly closer than Hillary and her borrowed talking point of "safer but not yet safe." This led to a New York Times story on the issue, where the Clinton camp decided to narrow the issue to domestic security, particularly in New York City, since 9/11. But that's really unimaginative thinking, and represents a desire to maintain the foreign policy status quo by omitting it from the debate. I agree with Simon Rosenberg:

I have to admit that I am not sympathetic to Hillary's position. With DHS a mess, our military degraded, our standing in the world diminished, the Middle East in much greater turmoil than prior to 9/11, terrorism around the world on the rise, Bin Laden still on the loose, Iran moving towards nuclearization, our great ally Israel weakened, international institutions like the UN and the World Bank under assault, climate change ignored, Russia slipping back into an aggressive autocracy.....are we really safer today? Is America and the world really better off as a result of the Bush years?

(By the way, check this story out by Justin Rood if you want to learn more about the Department of Homeland Security, a dumping ground for the worst hack political appointees and fundraisers imaginable. This is who Hillary's banking on to keep America safe?)

But let me get back to Edwards, who is far beyond where Hillary or even Obama is on this issue. He outlined a plan to fight terrorism today that immediately states that George Bush has used the fear of terrorism to push forward an ideological agenda that has resulted in an increasingly dangerous world, and that we have to get past bumper-sticker slogans and start thinking about how to manage this threat if we want to reverse the situation. Here are the steps:

As president, Edwards will take the following six key steps to shut down terrorism both its effects and its root causes. The Edwards plan will:

Rebalance our force structure for the challenges of the new century to ensure the force structure of our military matches its mission. Edwards believes we need to ensure that our force structure is well-equipped for the challenges of the new century. We must have enough troops to rebuild from Iraq; to bolster deterrence; to decrease our heavy reliance on Guard and Reserve members in military operations; and to deploy in Afghanistan and any other trouble spots that could develop.

Ensure our intelligence strategy adheres to proven and effective methods and avoids actions that will give terrorists or even other nations an excuse to abandon international law.

Hold regular meetings with top military leadership. Edwards will also reinstate a basic doctrine of national security management—military professionals will have primary responsibility in matters of tactics and operations, while civilian leadership will have authority in all matters of broad strategy and political decisions.

Create a "Marshall Corps" of 10,000 professionals, modeled on the Reserves systems, to stabilize weak and failing states.

Re-invest in the maintenance of our equipment so our strategy against terrorists is as effective as possible.

Implement a new National Security Budget that will include all security activities by the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, and our homeland security, intelligence, and foreign affairs agencies.

Most of this, like refurbishing equipment and re-jiggering the budget and reinstating the civilian/military decision-making process and outlawing torture and not using the Guard and Reserve as Army Pt II, is just common sense that this idiotic Administration has strayed from. But it's the fundamental approach that really appeals to me. This "Marshall Corps" is a great way to restore our image in the world and make fundamentalist radical Islam look far worse by comparison. And it's lines like this that shows Edwards has the best understanding of how the past six years have transpired: "Today, we know two unequivocal truths about the results of Bush's approach -- there are more terrorists and we have fewer allies."

I believe this vision by Edwards is similar to what Fareed Zakaria laid out in a much-discussed Newsweek article on how to restore America's place in the world. An excerpt:

We must begin to think about life after Bush [...] In 19 months he will be a private citizen, giving speeches to insurance executives. America, however, will have to move on and restore its place in the world. To do this we must first tackle the consequences of our foreign policy of fear. Having spooked ourselves into believing that we have no option but to act fast, alone, unilaterally and pre-emptively, we have managed in six years to destroy decades of international good will, alienate allies, embolden enemies and yet solve few of the major international problems we face [...]

The problem today is not that America is too strong but that it is seen as too arrogant, uncaring and insensitive. Countries around the world believe that the United States, obsessed with its own notions of terrorism, has stopped listening to the rest of the world.

(Read the whole thing, though Zakaria is somewhat establishment, it's fantastic.)

This is exactly equivalent to what Edwards has been saying, and it's what I think he would work to change as President. We know what the Republicans think; they may be running from Bush on some issues, but on foreign policy they want to be Bush on steroids. Chief among them is Rudy Giuliani, and look what Edwards had to say about him today.

"If Mayor Giuliani believes that what President Bush has done is good, and wants to embrace it and run a campaign for the Presidency saying, 'I will give you four more years of what this president has given you,' then he’s allowed to do that. He’ll never be elected President of the United States, but he’s allowed to do that."

The goal of terrorism is to sow fear. If we succumb to it and use all of our energies to react to it, we have changed America and given the terrorists their victory. John Edwards appears to be the only candidate brave enough to call bullshit on the entire operation, the only one prepared to engage with the world on his own terms rather than on the terrorists'. Chris Matthews picked up on this today on Hardball as it relates to Giuliani, leading to this fantastic commentary...

"I agree with what Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek this week, which is that terrorism isn't bombs and explosions and death... terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions... and you become fearful to the point that you shut out immigration, you shut out student exchanges, you keep people out of buildings ... and begin to act in an almost fascist manner because you're afraid of what might happen to you, and that's when terrorism becomes real, and frighteningly succesful. That's what I believe, and that's why I question the way Giuliani has raised this issue. He raises it as a specter, and in a weird way, he helps the bad guys."

But what Matthews hasn't seen is that John Edwards is on the opposite pole, unwilling to let America be drowned in fear. This is why, at this stage, I have to announce my support for him.