Enough gotchas
: I'm at the airport this morning -- a fresh, sparkling coating of terror orange paint still drying -- and I read in The Times and in the comments here and in various blogs the hot belch of "gotchas" because some of the information captured that led to yesterday's alerts was three years old. The implication, of course, is that the Cheney-Bush industrial complex dredged this up only to scare us and get a point in the polls: the August surprise.
Only I heard this news yesterday, too. And so what if some of what the terrorists gathered on that thankfully incompetent geek-jihadist's laptop was three years old? Does that mean they shouldn't tell us that these specific buildings have been and may still be under surveillance and then under attack?
Can't have it both ways, folks: Can't scream they they don't tell us what they know -- and then when they tell us what they know, it's not good enough for you. It's what they know. Can't scream that they're not connecting the dots and when they connect some, you scream because you don't like the picture it draws.
I'm no fan of Bush or Cheney. I think Tom Ridge is an incompetent dolt. I think John Ashcroft is a dangerous fanatic. But you don't hear me heh-heh-hehing this morning. You hear me thanking the lady at the security checkpoint for X-raying my loafers.
Enough with the gotchas. Enough with the demonizing. Enough with thinking that the bad guys are our guys. Enough with the naive, simplistic blame game.
I hated it when the right did all this to Bill Clinton: Bill and Hillary are evil, they said, and if we just get them out of the White House, heaven will be ours. And so I hate it when the left does this to George Bush: Dick and George are evil, they say, and if we just get them out of the White House, heaven will be ours.
Grow up.
Life isn't that simple. I hated Richard Nixon and wanted him out of office and think he was, indeed, a crook and pond scum. But I don't think that everything he did in office was maliciously motivated and evil. I hated Lyndon Johnson because he ran a war I hated and because I was young; I wanted him out of office and added my young, cracking voice to the mobs demanding that; yet I see now that LBJ also did great good. I don't much like George Bush or Dick Cheney but I don't think that they wake up every morning asking how they can ass-f* the world today. It's not that simple, folks.
And the problem is, if you think it is that simple, then you don't pay attention to what matters. If you think all our problems will be over when we get Bush (or Clinton or Nixon or LBJ or Carter or someday Hillary or Obama) out of office, then you're going to wake up the next day and realize that we still have all our problems. And we have them because you were so busy demonizing the guy on the top that you didn't go after the real demons.
: John Podhoretz is of the right. Quiz the two of us about our political beliefs and we'll end up miles apart. If Michael Moore had lunch with John, he'd end up shouting at him the way he shouted on Bill Maher's show the other night. He'd see a boogeyman across the table. I had lunch with John some months ago (it's time again) and we talked about terrorism and the war and trying to find solutions because we realize we're in this together.
Go read John's column yesterday, in which he says that the gotchas and the boogeymen won't get us anywhere. During America's "vacation from terrorism," he says:
American political junkies and politically engaged people in the West fell back into the comforting old habit of imagining that the only things that matter are the things American politicians do.
Everyone on the Left — from soft liberals to Michael Moore — seemed to have decided that the problems faced by the United States were primarily or even solely the fault of George W. Bush.
The Right fell to squabbling and niggling about the way in which the War on Terror was being fought.
During their vacation, both Left and Right fell prey to a kind of arrogant American innocence. It was as though both ideological camps essentially came to believe it was within the capacity of the United States to envision every conceivable difficulty we can face.
So the only reason we didn't stop 9/11, or went to war over WMD we haven't found, or faced terrible difficulties in pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan, is that we suffered from a "failure of vision."
Or because our leaders lied.
Even though these sorts of ideas have provoked nothing but rage and fury among the faithful who have chosen to believe in them, they are perversely comforting.
If we're so powerful, then we aren't facing much of a threat.
If we're the enemy — or, rather, if George W. Bush is the enemy — all we need do is turn the guy out of office and we'll be safe.
Meanwhile, fanatical fundamental murdering nutjobs spend years and years plotting their ways to kill thousands of us. The plot to bring down the World Trade Center took a helluva lot more than three years. They worked more than a decade to meet their goal. But here we are nya-nyaing and gotchaing while they plot.
And then the terrorists strike.
And then they're the ones who say "gotcha."
: LATER: See Ken Layne, too.
