McCain plays the "Fear Card"

I know its dark, but I have to laugh at the "boat" sentence. It is SO true.

I'm trying to figure out how we can protect ourselves from Barack Obama and his "Uncle" Jeremiah Wright!

An apt title and a thoughtful piece. Do you think this could foreshadow the tone of the post-convention race? I've been wondering how McCain's fortunes will go if the Iraqi government continues to fail to deal with its own corruption....

Gerry- This mode of thinking and mode of argumentation will in my view endure. If one of the Dems occupies the White House, Republicans will criticize him/her for coddling terrorists. If McCain should win, there will be efforts made to justify his conduct by saying that he may not be perfect, but at least he is not coddling terrorists. And we will continue to see a lack of differentiation between the various sects and groups and nationalities of the islamic world as far as Republicans are concerned- no difference between Sunni and Shia, or iranian, afghan, iraqi. They are all towelheads and camel jockeys, except for the ones who like us and sell us oil.

I base my view on the fact that we are still arguing about Vietnam. We can still experience, as we did in 2004, arguments that the guy who actually served (Kerry) was a lying chicken and the guy who ducked out (Bush) was a brave hero. And we still experience arguments that Democrat defeatism and disloyalty caused our defeat- it had nothing to do with the incompetence and corruption of the South Vietnamese government, or the determination and cleverness of the Viet cong and North Vietnamese efforts, or the impossibility of teaching the Vietnamese to love us by burning their villages, or teaching them to love democracy by saddling them with an undemocratic government . If we had just stayed the course, we would have won!
Richard Nixon was a Republican, but never mind.

I realize that not all Republicans feel this way, and that there are times that Democrats say hateful things as well. Where does the truth lie? In my view, there is still a legitimate case for the USA being able to use military force to defend our lives and vital interests. The invasion of AFghanistan was once such case, and few Dems argue against it. But we lack the ability to play global cop, and when we try to do that unilateraly we just cause ourselves severe problems- and risk bankrupting ourselves. Iraq is probably going to cost 3 trillion, not the absurd 50 billion originally projected by Bush.

Let me say at the outset that I totally respect those who hold opinions that differ from mine. That being said...

I cannot understand why whenever someone from "the other side of the aisle" discusses the very real prospect of terrorism, which is the evil menace of OUR time (just as Nazi Germany was the evil of my parent's generation), it is immediately branded "fear mongering."

Do you see the daily intelligence briefings that our policy makers see? Are you kept abreast of the latest threat assessments and scenarios that our intelligence community monitors on a 24/7/365 basis?

As far as Vietnam is concerned, I am not aware of any deification of George W. Bush or any glorying of his alleged military exploits during that period of our history.

I AM, however, aware that a certain Mass. Senator named John F. Kerry did serve his country during that time, denigrated the service of his fellow soldiers during a Congressional hearing, and has had his own "heroics" come under close examination critique by a group of men who call themselves "The Swift Boat Veterans" for truth. As of this writing, I am not aware that said JF Kerry has plausibly or credibly disproven their claims or has even unsealed his own military records.

Rocco- I do not read daily intelligence briefings. But I chose not to assume that Republican presidents take terrorism seriously and that Dem presidents do not.

As to George W. Bush, no we do not consider him a war hero, but Kerry did have a few bullets whistle in his vicinity whatever you may feel about his alleged exaggerations. I will argue for kerry to unseal his military records when you argue for Bush to reveal his whereabouts when he was apparently failing to meet the requirements of his Texas air national guard stint in order to attend parties. If we are arguing that boys will be boys, then cut Kerry a break.

I guess the bottom line is that I do not consider terrorism to be THE menace of our time. I consider it to be ONE OF the menaces of our time. Personally, I think that our continued dependence on oil is more of a menace to our survival as a nation than any threat of military action from islamic crazies- unless of course the islamic crazies get a hold of a few nuclear devices and figure out how to deliver them to the continental USA.

Chris, I agree, oil addiction has made us more vulnerable to the terrorists, no one seems to be getting that message. However you seem to contradict yourself in the last paragraph. Should the terrorists get a nuke device, it will be more than a menace, it will be total disaster, so perhaps terrorism is the overriding issue of our time.

It would be major disaster, not total disaster. We nuked Japan twice with tiny warheads, they survived. My argument is this: The CIA and the FBI will continue to work to prevent terrorists from accessing nuclear hardware, no matter who is in the White House. It is not the partisan issue that some appear to think it to be.

The threat is real. It's been overhyped by those who profit from there (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton, and all lawmakers who buy their stocks). We need exhaust all diplomatic avenues before we venture in more dumb wars. Kim Jon Il was and still more dangerous than anyone in Iraq or Iran. It's not a matter of whether they have it or not, we know they have it. At some point, whether we like it or not, Iran will have it. Then what? Are we going to attack Iran, korea, go after Bin Laden, keep an eye on Khadaffi? Are some point we will go bankrupt period. Anyone not connecting our military spending to the worry items you raised is missing the point quite frankly.

Chris the thing is here on Gather many people are retirees or close to it and are concerned by ideological things and also not looking into long term (20+ years) effects. I'm 28 years, Iraq war veteran and John McCain can say whatever he wants, the Iraqi people on the ground don't want to see us there. The Iraqi leadership, it's another story, they all playing this chess game on will get the bigger peice of the pie. What's the mission? What percentage of the mission will be satisfactory for an exit? Nobody could ever answer my questions. Then you come back here and people say the mission is democracy. LOL. In Iraq?

He is playing the fear card. Elect me or they will come kill you. As you said, the president is not the only one looking into this. Attacking Iran and staying in Iraq are not the best defense either.

Forgive me for sounding naive, but if terrorism is that big a threat, then why was it considered wise of the U.s. to build the largest terrorist training camp in existence then keep it stocked with U.S. soldiers for them to practice their tactics on? What was so smart about destabilizing the entire region so that terrorists could move more easily, get more money, and garner more recruits?

Actually Chris, the only one on your list above that I have a concern with IS the first one.

Ha ha Ivan- that is funny! At least you are honest about it, and God Bless ya for that.

I am okay with "somebody in Iraq is trying to kill my cousin"- unfortunately that is true for many americans at this date simply because alot of us have a cousin serving in Iraq. But as for politics, let's let the Iraqis vote Sunni or Shia, and let's allow Americans to vote Dem, Republican, Naderite, or Lyndon LaRouche. The thing that I dislike is the aspersion of disloyalty, the conspiracy theory thing of Al Qaeda and Dems being in bed together. hey, Dems hated Al Qaeda back in 2000 because they were enslaving and executing the women of Afghanistan while GWB was rushing to sign a gas pipeline deal with the Taliban. Look it up.

Rocco,

Talk about denigrating, the so called "swift boaters for truth" dumped feces on every American soldier who ever received any medals or awards of any kind by their actions to prevent the election of John Kerry. They weren't just dumping on Kerry but on all soldiers. The "proof" in this instance should not come from Kerry. He is the recipient of the medals and should not have to prove anything. He proved his worthiness before they were awarded. Now revisionists come along and denigrate his efforts and awards. The burden of proof is totally on them!

James- yes, I will buy that. The kerry/swiftboat tragedy was basically engineered by Karl Rove, it has his fingerprints all over it. One of Rove's techniques was to act through third parties in order to preserve the cleanliness of the candidate he was pushing- in this case George W. Bush. Another technique he employed was to find a means of destroying the "strong suit" of an opposing candidate in a way that would at the same time distract from the "weak suit" of his own candidate.

We ended up hearing that Kerry had "Only" served under fire for a few months, and we ended up hearing a few people claiming that his medals were not well earned. Lost in that absurd discussion was the fact that he CHOSE to get shot at, that several of his boat mates argued that he DID earn the medals, and that at this same time George W. Bush was clearly ducking his air guard requirements in order to get drunk every night.

And this comparison was supposed to benefit George W. Bush? It is somewhat incomprehensible to me how it could. But because George W. Bush is born again and a reformed alcoholic, we cannot question how he chose to duck Vietnam. And because kerry engaged in considerable public soul searching at the time involving the cases in which American soldiers murder Vietnamese civilians (quite well documented in the My Lai case) he is disloyal and a traitor.

The nice thing about McCain, to return to the original theme, is that he actually is a war hero who made great sacrifices for his country. I give him full credit for that, thought I think him too old to serve as president and lament his slavish mouthing of right wing nonsense in order to keep them on his side.