A Sane Counterterrorism Policy

From Barack Obama.

OK -- I'm not so impressed that a Democrat has this take on on terrorism and how to fight it. It's a pretty commonsensical approach, and really does fit in with the thrust of our post-Cold War, pre-frat boy loser foreign policy. What impresses me is that a Democrat is actually standing there and telling it like it is, gloves off.

Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

The President would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq -- which didn't exist before our invasion -- and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al Qaeda and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission.

And worse -- he is fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight. Bin Ladin and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas. But they can provoke the reaction we've seen in Iraq: a misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad name, and prompts the American people to question our engagement in the world.

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

The whole neocon meme of "winning in Iraq" is so much bullshit. We shouldn't have been there in the first place. Like Obama, I supported the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. I never bought the lies about Iraq. (Sorry, kids, but there was enough evidence at the time that the rationales were bogus, even if they hadn't been changing every week.)

And he's not just throwing stones at the incompetents in the White House. He's coming up with a plan, which is something we haven't had yet.

And then, there the "analysis" from Nedra Pickler AP, who focuses almost entirely on Obama's declaration that he will, if necessary, take military action against al Qaeda in Pakistan. What no one is telling you, of course, is that we already do things like that. Those operations are quiet, precise, and fast, and we don't hear about them. And it's interesting that there's barely a mention of Obama's criticism of the war in Iraq and the way it's been a clusterfuck from its conception. NYT also highlights Pakistan, but give a better look at what Obama actually said. Andrew Sullivan gets it. Uncle Jimbo at Black Five doesn't.:

In a monumentally lame attempt to prove his tough guy cred Barack Obama trots out his cunning plan to invade a sovereign nation in defiance of it's leader, who is more or less an ally.

It's interesting that this same misreading of Obama's speech appears in the comments at TPM Cafe (see below for link). It's obvious that this is going to be part of the right-wing response, and I suspect that the misreading is deliberate. (I guess that to some, the threat potential of terrorists and Democrats is pretty much fungible -- especially if they're both brown.) Of course it's not true. Obama didn't say anything about invading Pakistan and condemns that approach in the same speech -- he's not in favor of repeating our mistakes in Iraq around the globe, unlike the hawks in the punditocracy. It seems the Feith approach to foreign policy has completely infused the right. (It's interesting that I, who have no military expertise to speak of, understand that Obama is talking about a special operations activity against al Qaeda, and Uncle Jimbo, who, we assume, does that have background. doesn't talk about that.) It also appears that Uncle Jimbo didn't read the full text of Obama's speech (which is easily available). He's written a pretty much standard-issue, knee jerk right wing response with no substance to something that didn't happen except in his imagination. I can hardly wait to see what GayPatriot has to say about it -- unless he just sweeps it under the rug. (I'm actually predicting the "invade Pakistan" mantra on that one. That's probably going to be the party line on the right.)

Some good comments at TPM Cafe.

Ben Smith points out that Obama's speech is conspicuously missing "the buzzwords of those who see a global conflict between the West and a specifically Muslim insurgency." I think this reinforces my point about the extent to which Obama's trying to shift the debate here.

The debate needs to be shifted: the pro-war right has made this a religious/racial issue and I think our counterterrorism efforts need to be framed the way Obama is doing it. We're not fighting Muslims, Keith Boykin notwithstanding. We're fighting terrorists.

This seems to be a breaking story -- not much coverage of a major policy speech by a major presidential candidate yet. Weird much?