Slicing through the major media's typically vapid analysis of how Pakistan changes the presidential race, Obama alone seems to get what got us here. On the day the Boston Globe's ever-flatulent Peter Canellos wrote that Hillary and Giuliani would be the winners, based on a month-old poll which links them in voters' minds with more "foreign policy experience," Obama aide David Axelrod said voters should draw the conclusion that his candidate is the best choice.
Why would Hillary and Giuliani, the strongest supporters of the war which Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, calls "the never-to-be-hoped-for-gift" to bin Laden, the Iraq War, be the best candidates to trust with foreign policy? That's like choosing Barry Bonds to be the commissioner in charge of getting steroids out of professional baseball.
Canellos bloviates:
Voters view the candidates of both parties differently depending on whether the spotlight is on foreign policy or domestic policy. And the beneficiaries of a renewed focus on terrorism are clear, according to polls conducted late last month by the Pew Research Center: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani.
Axelrod said it was the Iraq War which fueled the religious extremism which now threatens to make Pakistan a domino for bin Laden. This is a debate which needs to take place, if we care about our own hides and want to prevent what is truly looking like the End of Time.
Canellos' eight-grade take on the Bhutto assassination is a mirror of American naivety after 9/11. Go out and kick ass, any ass, just keep the "thems" out "there" scared so they don't f--- with us. Never admit you did a damned thing wrong, that's blaming the victims. Don't count civilian casualties. Who cares?
We have exactly ZERO time left to get this, folks. Bin Laden is on a roll. He wants no change in American foreign policy whatsoever. Only for us to keep doing exactly what we have been doing.