The Plane Truth: Comes Now the Hue and Cry 2

Already the sycophants of the current Federal Administration are holding high yesterday’s revelation of a plot to blow up commercial airliners as some sort of justification for the misadventure in Iraq.

Here’s one example, from Charles Krauthammer, who normally is not given to hysteria; heaven knows what the nuttier fringe-dwellers are saying:

Like Iraq, Vietnam was but one theater in a larger global struggle — the struggle against the Soviet Union and its communist clients around the world — and by the early 1970s, the newly reshaped McGovernite party had to face the larger post-Vietnam challenges of the Cold War. The result? Political disaster.

The fallacy is this: Ignoring the argument–which can be made–that the Viet Namese war was not part of a global struggle against anything, but was, instead, the the continuation of the Viet Nam’s long struggle for independence from Western occupation–ignoring that fascinating debate . . .

The fallacy is that the war in Iraq is not part of the global struggle against anything; it is rather a foolish and fantastic waste of blood and treasure that ought to have been expended on identifying and neutralizing terrorists.

Eugene Robinson says it well:

Maybe the discovery of the airliner plot will bring us back to the real world. There are deadly enemies out there, and one way to fight them, as the British demonstrated yesterday, is through intelligence. One way not to fight them, as the Bush administration continues to demonstrate, is through reckless military action that may kill terrorists but also kills innocent civilians and thus creates a new generation of terrorists — doubtless including some bright young man or woman who will come up with a new idea for downing civilian airliners.

We will end up boarding our flights barefoot, barehanded and buck naked except for a hospital gown they’ll make us put on at the airport. And, at this rate, Osama bin Laden will be watching CNN from his cave, smiling contentedly.

Some will also use it to justify the current Federal Administration’s repeated violations of the law in abusing prisoners and gathering “intelligence” (Gosh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they found some!). I’m not even going to look for links on that one.

Poppycock.

The American Way, which they claim to defend, is to obey the rule of law; if you don’t like the law, try to change the law.

The American Way is not to ignore the law.