When did conservative politicians and their friends stop thinking in order to devote themselves full-time to shouting and waving their arms? I date it to 9/11, though it is possible that's only when their gesturing started knocking things over so that it got hard to ignore.
Really, though, does not the reaction to the despicable acts performed that day seem now rather out-sized? The attack could have been regarded as a horrendous crime demanding investigation, prosecution, and punishment. But, no, we were told it was an act of war--19 guys with box cutters achieving what formerly required an army. If it's war, the civilian body count of around 3000 probably does not strike, say, the Japanese as a sufficient reason to invent a new epoch, the "post-9/11 era."
When war is declared, the shouting and sloganeering follow. The clash of civilizations! The Islamofascists! Anything is permitted, for we were attacked by the evil enemy. I can't even remember which Democrat (Biden?) said of Rudy Giuliani that all his sentences include a noun, a verb, and a reference to 9/11, but he had it about right--though there was no particular reason to single out Giuliani. The way I'd put it is, after 9/11, we were told, "Because we were attacked, we must do x"--and x could be anything. You couldn't be a patriot if you noticed what freshman composition teachers sometimes write in the margins of student themes: "logical connection weak."
A nation at war doesn't listen to reason. John Kerry made the mistake of suggesting that a "war on terror" could not succeed, that we need instead constant vigilance, over a long period, exercised in defense against a dangerous but weak enemy. What we don't need is to lash out, go crazy, invade countries, waterboard prisoners, fly them off to "black sites" in distant lands or keep them indefinitely in Cuba. Once, it was possible to imagine that the "conservative" party might make that case.
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