Tuesday, April 14, 2009

"MAKING MORE TERRORISTS": RIGHT-WINGERS STILL DON'T GET IT. THEY'RE APPARENTLY INCAPABLE OF GETTING IT.

Jules Crittenden, responding with snark to liberals' approval of the handling of the Somali hostage situation:

There's gotta be someone somewhere squawking about how Obama is just making new pirates....

An e-mailer, responding to Jonah Goldberg's surprising praise of the president for his handling of the situation:

Why aren't you saying that Obama has created more pirates now? Americans obviously believe the snark from the left, why not the right?

Rush Limbaugh, in the midst of a long, sarcastic riff mock-praising Obama:

...more problems for the Obama administration, in a rogue piece from the Associated Press....

"The killing of three [merchant marine organizers] from Somalia sparked concern for other hostages and fear that the stakes have been raised for future hijackings." So, yes, this is the same operative theory that the left and the Drive-Bys used in Iraq, that by actually going to Iraq, we created more terrorists, that we created more hatred for the United States. And here's AP, in the midst of this brilliant action by our young and brave president, suggesting that taking action to save the life of the captain, is now gonna create more pirates....


Right-wingers still can't comprehend the "making more terrorists" argument. We used it in reference to the war in Iraq, not the war in Afghanistan -- it's not about a military response per se, but about a military response directed at people who had nothing to do with we're ostensibly responding to. (It would apply in this case if Obama, say, responded to the Somali pirates by sending 150,000 troops to overthrow Qaddafi in Libya.) We also use it in reference to acts that violate commonly accepted rules of war and justice -- like, y'know, torture. We don't use it in reference to killing people who are currently holding an AK-47 to an American's head.

It's not that hard to understand this -- but the right has pushed its own wedge-issue misreading of our argument for so long that, as far as I can tell, every right-winger in America actually believes it.

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