All Intensive Purposes

Left Blogistan has figured out that the White House exploited Great Britain's great police work this week to score political points, even if the mainstream media is blindly following the White House's talking points. Well, the U.S. media anyway -- here is AFP (i.e., Agence France-Presse):

Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.

The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin. . . .

His remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn't: News of the plot could soon break.

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House spokesman Tony Snow had argued that Democrats wanted to raise what Snow called "a white flag in the war on terror," citing as evidence the defeat of a three-term Democratic senator who backed the Iraq war in his effort to win renomination. . . .

"The comments were purely and simply a reaction" to Democratic voters who "removed a pro-defense Senator and sent the message that the party would not tolerate candidates with such views," said Snow.

The public relations offensive "was not done in anticipation. It was not said with the knowledge that this was coming," the spokesman said.

Snow said Bush first learned in detail about the plot on Friday, and received two detailed briefings on it on Saturday and Sunday, as well as had two conversations about it with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But a senior White House official said that the British government had not launched its raid until well after Cheney held a highly unusual conference call with reporters to attack the Democrats as weak against terrorism. . . .

On Wednesday, Cheney had suggested that Democrats believe "that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't, we can't, be," he said. . . .

. . . Republicans hoped the raid would yield political gains.

"I'd rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn't done well," one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals.

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances.

Anyone surprised by the White House's exploitation of these events hasn't been paying attention for the last five years. The question is, what to do? You could complain about it. Or -- well, let me just turn over the floor to Publius:

You know what I say to that — boo-frickin’-hoo. Get over it. The GOP politicizes terrorism — that’s what they do. They’ve been doing it for five years. They did it to start a war. They did it to win an election. And they’re going to keep doing it until they lose. People can moan and whine all day about how mean and unfair they’re being, or they can fight fire with fire and try to beat them. And so I’m not doing the obligatory “can’t we put partisanship aside in times like this” to show my reasonable centrism. Instead, I’ll take a stab at politicizing terrorism and say this — the failed UK plot illustrates why the people in charge of anti-terrorism policy shouldn’t be in charge of anti-terrorism policy anymore. It also demonstrates the utter failure of the Iraq War as anti-terrorism policy. And finally, it shows why Republicans should lose this fall.

* * * * *

. . . the Dems and the GOP have two fundamentally different ways of fighting terrorism. The GOP believes in fighting terrorism by invading countries and attempting to impose democracy at the point of a gun, which will then through some Rube Goldberg-esque logic lead to less terrorism. The Dems favor a focus on identifying the terrorists through things like intelligence and multi-lateral cooperation. Yes, that’s grossly simple, but it's generally accurate. The neocons fundamentally believe that invading Iraq and Iran are effective anti-terrorism policies. And it’s really hard to overstate just how completely absurd that is. Even if you were sympathetic in 2002, reality should have intruded by now.

In sum, these people simply can’t be trusted with our national security. Let's stop crying and start saying so.

Amen.