Not just weak on terrorism....Worthless on it

Here's what I have the greatest trouble reconciling with this damn administration. 9/11 was more than just a political windfall. The deaths of 3000 people was a chilling wake-up call to a problem we could no longer ignore. No longer was terrorism that menace 'over there'. It came here and pounded down our door. It threatened our families. It threatened our lives. Terrorism is a threat, it is a disease of inhumanity and it has to be eliminated effectively.

(I'm not about to get into the whole 'chickens come to roost' defense of other people on the Left. That argument, that the US 'deserves' what it gets, does little or nothing to address the ironclad mindset of Takfiri Wahhabists, a strain of Islam so virulent and dominating that it makes Dominionists look like children. Anybody who jumps up to carp ad nauseaum about the madness that is the American Taliban better not be bending over backwards to turn a blind eye to Islam's Religious Right)

But what infuriates me the most, time and time again, is this administration's long and screwy record of just outright fucking negligence when it comes to catching these guys. For example:

the PR Hiroshima that was and remains Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. What a way to let extremist Muslims undermine moderates. "Americans don't mean us harm? Don't mean to subjugate fellow Muslims? Well what do you call dogs, prisoners being beaten to death and a guy with a hood on and electric wires strapped to his testicles? Oh, that's right. The Americans call it liberation."

the Clouseau-like idiocy that traded Bin Laden's capture for a war in Iraq. Here you have a country that had not one suicide bombing before we came along. Not one. Not one instance where the terrorists were in charge. Not one mosque or religious celebration rocked by violence or the deaths of children. No weapons of mass destruction. Barely a threat of any sort to its neighbors post Gulf War. Now? Now the place is lit up with terrorism every. single. day.)

the Pentagon command incompetence that resulted in soldiers not securing Iraq's explosives at Al Qaqaa, letting them be used against our own soldiers later by insurgents. Of all the 13000 official wounded, I wonder how many of them lost their limbs because Rumsfeld or his underlings decided that securing Iraq's bomb-making material really wasn't that important.

the cock-up that was leaking the name of a major figure in an Al Qaeda sting. Score one for the war on terra, eh?

and now, discovered only recently by the catatonic mainstream press, the almost jubilant disregard of national security that is the Valerie Plame incident.

And that's just the war on terrorism. I could probably hammer out a whole seperate list of the Bush administration's mistakes domestically or diplomatically (*cough*cough* deficit at 7 trillion*cough*cough*billions lost and missing at the Pentagon*cough* North Korea or Iran*cough*).

The simple truth is that the Bush administration has consistently failed to secure "liberty, peace and democracy" for the American people, much less for the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, their actions have habitually resulted in the opposite. Look at the freedom that's 'on the march' in Iraq. It's nothing but chaos and a terrorist carnival now. Mission Accomplished, George.

And still neo-con Republicans love him. Drunk on November champagne, they ignore the staggering amount of evidence that Bush isn't doing anything for anybody and blindly trumpet his success at a second term as if it was some kind of rubber stamp from God affirming their selfish little beliefs.

All I can say is that it's pretty goddamn clear Bush-supporting Republicans do not care about this country. If they aren't undermining it from the outside (rhetorically or legislatively), by wasting our soldiers and our financial resources in an effort to create new terrorist training camps, they're attempting to kill it from the inside: by unravelling Constitutional protections, by bleeding the country dry economically; by fighting to make sure gays are legally recognized only as second class citizens; by selling, without apology, the rights of the American people, to large corporations and extremist Christian leaders; or by.... and this is the one that reeeeeally gets my blood boiling... by working to paralyze our Constitution and replacing it in turn, with a theocracy.

I honestly wonder if that's what their intent is all along. To drag this country to the brink of destruction, by tearing it apart from all angles. Maybe, just maybe, that's part of their postmillenialist Left Behind fantasy. To see it all smoldering in ash. Maybe they think, in some twisted little part of their morally deprived belief system, that if they just blow the tits off the world, Jesus will come and prove all their detractors wrong. And then everything will be roses. Children will listen to their parents. Everyone will go to church. Gays will disappear. The Bible will be the only law of the land and it'll rain kittens, candy, popcorn and balloons every Sunday evening.

It's a disconnection from reality I can barely comprehend sometimes.

And now I think I need a drink.