Posted on 01/04/2010 9:47:56 AM PST by presidio9
The new year begins even worse than the last one ended. Only this time it isn't a debate about health care showing how lousy and mean partisan politics have become in America, it is the debate over the war on terrorism.
As usual it starts with a has-been like Dick Cheney acting as if that war is some party issue, as if the country is somehow more vulnerable to fanatics because Democrats have the White House and the Congress, as if all those who hate America and want to kill Americans see this tremendous opening to do that because Barack Obama is in charge now.
The idea is dumber than that television show about the Jersey Shore.
Still there was Cheney - who once was able to hide almost as well as Osama Bin Laden - out in front after a failed attempt to blow up a Northwest airplane on its way into Detroit on Christmas Day, like he wanted to be the first Obama hater to take his swings.
Only Cheney looks at a near tragedy on Christmas and sees opportunity. When he does, he doesn't just sound like some old crank in the park. He sounds like a bum.
But then partisan attacks like this are the real national pastime now in American politics, why we seem unable to get out of our own way even on the big things, why the constant war of words between the left and the right can somehow trivialize the most crucial issues of a world that becomes less safe by the day.
It is why politics in this country are as low as they have been since the Civil War. Why this has become an Un-Civil War America, wasting too much time being at war with itself.
So somehow Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his mosh pit of a brain are supposed to be Obama's fault. We are supposed to believe that the country really is at greater risk because a Democrat is in charge. Right. Cheney probably believes that if Al Gore had been President in September 2001, the terrorists would have taken down the Empire State Building, too.
This war isn't a party issue. It is an American issue, about our character as much as any politician's. Cheney gives an interview to Politico and worries about the "social transformation" he says Obama is trying to fashion. "Reclamation" is a better word, a reclamation of the values and ideals trampled by the previous administration.
Here is Cheney on Abdulmutallab's failure to set off his homemade explosive device on Northwest Flight 253:
"As I've watched the events of the last few days, it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think that if he has a low-key response to blow up an airliner ...we won't be at war."
Cheney used to be a much better liar than this. But that was back when he was selling this country a bill of goods on Niger and uranium and weapons of mass destruction. He must believe if he can sell all that, wholesale, he can rewrite his place in history, the mess he and George W. Bush left to this President.
He acts now as if the last administration were some kind of triumph, as if the economy collapsed on somebody else's watch the way the towers of the World Trade Center did. Maybe that is the most amazing lie of current American life, people actually expected to believe that Bush and Cheney's eight years in office are the good old days.
Now everything is supposed to be their way against Obama's, Republicans versus Democrats, liberals versus conservatives, the apparent goal to get the whole country shouting at one another as if it's nighttime cable TV, and every debate is supposed to sound like life-and-death.
Only the war on terrorism really is life-and-death.
And the security lines are longer than ever; we saw them again on Saturday afternoon as we flew back to the United States, everybody patted down at the boarding gate, every carry-on bag checked, item by item. It was the first flights after Sept. 11 all over again.
Maybe it isn't some breakdown in security in Nigeria, where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's flight originated, that makes Cheney sound more like an old fool than ever. Or that Abdulmutallab came as close as he did to exploding that bomb.
Maybe it is this: That the America Obama inherited is hated more now than it was pre-Bush. It isn't just the President who needs to be stronger than ever. It is all of us.
Think about it: "Guido" is a derrogatory term for Italians? Is Antonin Scalia a "guido?"
Would he fit into this picture?
Italian-Americans reduced to being pets of the Libs, how sad. The guido show is one thing but being a pet for the white libs and their mush brains is a complete humiliation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.