Fear Mongering; The View from Up Here

Cross posted from DeMediacratic Nation:

The NYTimes Editorial board sees the recent release yesterday of “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” as having a message, the message being, “Be very afraid. And don’t question the president.”

Oddly, the board chooses that as the underlying message as though it and others in the business of propaganda are having their right to free speech challenged. Here’s an idea, why not hold off on the knee jerk reaction, pause and just ‘listen to the president?’ That way you might spend a little less time reacting as though we’re stuck in some bizarre time warp in an alternate universe that never recognizes anything changing. Has the board heard of a general by the name of Petreaus? Do they know that President Bush won in 2004 or are they stuck somewhere?

Acknowledging “the report’s conclusions” as “disturbing,” is a start; but they fail with their ultimate conclusion. Their conclusion is more in line with an ‘we told you so,’ as in the case on the ground doesn’t matter so much as that we were right; at this point they prepare to move forward from their roughly 2003 posture. Why else would they say, “if the report is given an honest reading, it is a powerful rebuke to Mr. Bush’s approach to the war on terror. It vindicates those who say that the Iraq war is a distraction from the real fight against terrorism.”

If not mistaken a “distraction” is something to be ignored or if nothing else, the response to a “distraction’ should be muted or minor, while efforts are concentrated on the bigger task at hand. The Board however, distracts itself during the course of its tizzy when noting Iraq as a distraction, then near closing noting when in reference to their statements that al Qaeda was not in Iraq prior to the invasion that “we’ve seen no evidence of that, and none was in the intelligence report.”

So there is an acknowledgement of the fact that al Qaeda is in Iraq regardless of their time of entry or birth there. Why then, close with “Congress surely can see through the president’s fear-mongering and show Mr. Bush the exit from Iraq that he refuses to find for himself.” The board’s closing reveals that they are still fighting an old, old battle which prevents them from truly seeing today; else wise why would we grope for the exit as though this would resolve it all as we head on back or increase our efforts in the Afghanistan region, which may prove to be a “distraction” to the reality of what Iraq has become.

The board’s perceived enemy is the Bush Administration, viewing it as the real enemy, as the makings of a fascist if not fascist administration already. The Times editorial board has a myopic view of what fear mongering is when they cannot recognize their own brand of it.