Thursday, January 19, 2006

The Al Qaeda "Truce"

Rusty and Howie have already commented on the latest communique from Dr. Demento (or his stand in) but I thought I'd like to make a further observation about the lack of political acumen that this proposal suggests. It reveals someone who doesn't have the slightest idea how alliances and factions work within a democracy. The "truce proposal" makes the critical mistake of simply adopting all of the MOVEON/KOS talking points:

1. The US effort in Iraq is a "disaster" for the US, and only serves to antagonize the locals.
2. US troop morale is terrible, as exemplified by idiosyncratic and out-of-context evidence that runs counter to what the troops actually say in milblogs, during interviews, and in polls of military personnel. We (Al Qaeda) get stronger as you (the US and pro-democracy Arabs) get weaker. [Actually the evidence says the opposite, and the primary negative influence on troop morale appears to be the defeatist attitude and rhetoric of our own fifth column left.]
3. If the US leaves, abandoning its imperialistic ways, the turmoil in the Islamic world will eventually resolve itself. It's only our intervention that keeps things stirred up.
4. The Bush administration is lying to Americans, both about the condition of the war and about their own intentions. The majority of Americans now agree with this assessment and want to skedaddle. [Note: Since the polls no longer suggest this, the tape may well have been produced some time ago, as Howie, Rusty and a number of others suggest.]
5. The US has split its resources, allowing Al Qaeda to become stronger in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
6. The primary beneficiaries of the US war in the Middle East are the Halliburtonesque war profiteers and the oil capitalists.

Even though he makes all these points without attribution to Moore, Galloway, or Zuniga the effect cannot be viewed as beneficial to the cause of our domestic masochists, because it makes the task of distinguishing their positions from those of the Islamofascists nearly impossible. The association delegitimizes them in ways that none of their political opponents could possibly manage on their own. This makes the following offer startlingly ironic:

We are a nation that Allah banned from lying and stabbing others in the back, hence both parties of the truce will enjoy stability and security to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by war.

Without realizing it Dr. Demento has thrust a knife in back of his ally, making the idiotarians less, rather than more useful to him. Bad move. Not that he had any good moves left, mind you.

(Cross-posted to Demosophia and The Jawa Report)