Bin Laden Video Premieres To Conservative Raves

The latest video episode of Osama bin Laden’s terror series (transcript) has stirred up the rightist media mouthpieces like little that has come before it. There is a uniform glee amongst them that savors the return of OBL much the same as Harry Potter fans relish each new edition of the young wizard’s tales. Were it opening at the Cineplex, I expect that lines of Crusaders dressed up as Rummy and Saddam would be forming around the block. Their delight stems from their confidence that every Osama sighting scores points for the Republican Doctrine of freedom by agression.

Their leader, Mr. Bush, kicked things off with his own critique of Osama’s new production:

“I found it interesting that on the tape Iraq was mentioned, which is a reminder that Iraq is a part of this war against extremists.”

It’s also a reminder that bin Laden is still free to make videos that bring such joy to the hearts of America’s conservative warmongers. The eminence grise of this gang, Rush Limbaugh declared, less than a year ago, that he would no longer carry water for the GOP losers of last November’s election. But today he still wears his yoke with giddy elation:

“It is a liberal rant. It’s everything you would hear out of San Francisco. It’s what you would hear from a major college campus, take your pick of a professor. It’s on the Senate floor. It’s anything you would hear out of the mouth of an average elected Democrat. It’s stunning. I can’t wait to get a hold of the actual transcript of this thing…”

Rush might have a point if you believe that liberal rants propose state-sponsored religions that take precedence over Constitutional law as bin Laden does in this video; or if you believe that it was liberals and not the Reagan administration that supported bin Laden’s Mujahideen in Afghanistan who are also praised in this video. This is the kind of misrepresentation for which the right is famous. Sean Hannity provides another example:

“(Bin Laden) seemed to adopt the very same language that is being used by the hard left in this country as he describes what’s going on in Iraq as a civil war, he actually used the term ‘neocons’ …”

Indeed, bin Laden referred to neocons Richard Perle, the disgraced Pentagon advisor who was forced to resign from the Defense Policy Board for conflict of interest; Donald Rumsfeld, the disgraced Secretary of Defense who was forced to resign for incompetence; and Dick Cheney, who, while still in office, has the distinction of being the least popular vice-president ever. If Hannity wants to associate bin Laden’s comments critical of these neocons with Democrats for the purpose of tarnishing them, he should be aware that he is also disparaging the vast majority of Americans who oppose these crooks and made their views known long ago.

And Wizbang chimes in: “The new OBL tape is out… He’s feeling kinda down spending all his time in a cave talking to himself so he decided to use his tape to audition for Daily Kos…”

And Protein Wisdom: “To borrow from Voltaire, if Osama bin Laden didn’t exist, Republicans would have to invent him. At the very least, they might want to send him a fruit basket.”

And Ace of Spades: “Watch him criticize Democrats, Kos-like, for not being forceful enough in trying to end the War in Iraq, and even praise Noam Chomsky and the Kyoto Accord. I’ll give him this: he knows his target audience.”

And Wake Up America: “WOW, after reading the transcript, bin Laden is getting ALL his talking points from the Democrats in our own country. How many times have we said ‘they are listening to us’, they are ’emboldened by our Democratic politicians?'”

And Little Green Footballs: “The new Osama video is all over the news; in it, he advocates reading Noam Chomsky. It’s another pretty direct appeal to the Western left.”

And Atlas Shrugs: “The Bin Laden sounds like a candidate for the Democrat presidential ticket.”

The celebration greeting bin Laden must be gratifying coming from the group that has provided him with the most effective recruiting campaign he could have ever imagined. This video seems like little more than a holiday bonus for his most loyal fans. Do conservatives think for a minute that bin Laden doesn’t know the effect of the words he has chosen? To whom do they think he is playing?

If I had to pick out a single piece of this production number that succeeded in delivering a message that deserves our attention, it would be this:

“…despite America being the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-date military arsenal as well…19 young men were able to change the direction of its compass.”

The message delivered here is not the one that bin Laden thinks it is. The sad point that this quote conveys is that America, under the guidance of the Bush Administration, has radically shifted course. We have adopted new laws that chafe against our Constitution. We have, for the first time, engaged in a war of aggression. We have abandoned long-held values of justice and humanitarianism. We have become divided as never before. And our faith in institutions like elections and the media and the church are strained and tainted. And all of these changes in the direction of our compass are indeed due to the reactions of frightened politicians who infect their constituents with their fear. They believe that the answer to terrorism is to be afraid; to lock yourself up in a prison so that the evildoers cannot harm you; to surrender your liberties in pursuit of a false security. Never mind Franklin D. Roosevelt, who’s famous quote went further than most people recite:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed effort to convert retreat into advance.”

This is the victory of modern terrorism. It’s the sense of gratification we feel believing, in our bunkers, that the terrorists have not won and that we are still a proud and free people. Our enemies will never see us cower. Sure, they’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us resort to preemptive war and torture and submission to imperial, undemocratic leaders. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators.

And now they see us anxiously hanging on every word uttered by the madman they revere. But if there is one thing that offers even a small measure of relief, it is that they will never have the satisfaction of seeing us recoil from militarism or the comforting imposition of martial law.

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20 thoughts on “Bin Laden Video Premieres To Conservative Raves

  1. New Osama video seems yet another forgery. Everyone needs Osama alive:
    terrorists as symbolic leader and the US Administration – to avoid
    scaling down the war on terror.
    Obadiah Shoher rightly notes (
    http://www.samsonblinded.org/news/osama-commemorates-911-1114 ) that
    new Osama talks like a leftist university professor. I like Shoher’s
    analysis. No way a terrorist leader like Osama would use a speechwriter. Osama is famous
    for his rhetoric.
    Also, in the tape Osama both threatens America with attack (by
    “proving” Americans polytheists) and offers (yet another time)
    long-term coaching in Islam.
    But his dyed beard makes me cautious. Islam’s mujahedeen dye their
    beards before battle.

  2. I bet you’re the kind of guy who quakes with outrage when the NSA collects phone traffic data but who doesn’t blink an eye at smoking bans, overbroad environmental regulations based on dubious science, or John Edwards promising that under his universal health care plan, everyone would be required to go to the doctor for preventative care.

    To argue that conservatives revere bin Laden is simply shameful. Nobody among the evil neocon warmongering Constitution shredders thinks bin Laden actually gives a fig about Kyoto or sub prime lending. Instead, they think it funny that he’s so desperate at this point that he is parroting progressive talking points written for him by a guy who, before he went all jihadi, used to write heavy metal reviews.

    The rest of your screed is filled with the typical hyperbole of leftist boilerplate. Even as it pretends toward a concern over civil liberties, the clear machinery behind it is strictly partisan.

    But I enjoyed it for its tone of self righteous OUTRAGE! Mannered, sure. Predictable, yes. But it has a certain style to it. Whereas bin Laden’s latest just kinda read like a grocery list of grievances, your piece is vital and impassioned.

    Incredibly silly — but heartfelt. And really, isn’t that all that matters? How you feel

    • Indeed, I quake with outrage when America’s civil liberties are assaulted, or when the greedy and selfish try to poison me or my planet. I take it from your tone that those things don’t bother you. (fyi: Edwards only wants to mandate the availability of coverage, not how it’s used).

      I am not arguing that conservatives revere bin Laden, simply that they tingle with anticipation when these communiques appear as they imagine the ways they will use it to bash liberals and sow fear, as this collection of quotes demonstrates. Why is it that their response to this video is more critical of fellow Americans (i.e. Democrats) than it is of bin Laden?

      But thanks for the backhanded compliment on my style. I’ll take what I can get.

      • Protein Wisdom has refused to post the comments I made in rebuttal to their response to this article. For the record, I simply said what is contained in the comment above, as well as this:

        As for your allegation that, “Leftists have interpreted 9/11 as the Third World finally striking back at its American oppressor,” the truth is that we are seeking a realistic construct for the roots of terrorism so that it can be countered and defeated. That is a far more productive path than the inane Rightist claims that, They hate us for our freedom,” or that, We deserved it because of the gays and the ACLU.

        I then left this post as my objection to their censorship (which they also censored):

        Thanks for affirming my preconceptions of this web site’s commitment to free speech and open dialog. I left a comment last night before all but 2 of those published here, but my comment isn’t here? Even though I was specifically called out, you deny to post my rebuttal. Nice.

        I guess you guys are just afraid to let your fragile readers be exposed to contrary viewpoints that might contain some…whadyacallit…truth!

  3. (fyi: Edwards only wants to mandate the availability of coverage, not how it’s used).

    Uh, no. Edwards’ statements on the issue were very clear.

    “It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

    He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.”

    And, yes, the Leftcult is trying to “propose state-sponsored religions that take precedence over Constitutional law” — it’s called The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, and if you look in places like California where one of its acolytes, Jerry Brown, is state attorney general and is threatening all manner of city and county governments to submit. Let’s list that under “real assault on civil liberties”, not some Victorian vapors over phone monitoring of calls between terrorists and their American contacts.

    • You’re reading too much into this. When Edwards says, “you can’t choose not to go to the doctor…” the meaning in common dialectic is ‘must not,” as in it would be unwise. And part of his statement was theoretical to demonstrate that how the risks and costs would be distributed if everyone got preventative care, and would save money (and lives) in the long run.

  4. laws that chafe against our Constitution.

    Nothing like a leftist hiding behind the Constitution, because, you know, the fair doctrine of free speech applies to Larry Flynt far more than it applies to, say, those right-wing mouthpieces.

    Then there’s that whole socialization thing, the Democrat stock in trade, but who has time or patience anymore to debate with the willfully blind something they’ve refused to see for a half decade.

    I quake with outrage when America’s civil liberties are assaulted

    I’ll bet. Except if they’re capitalistic, white, and self-sufficient? In those cases it’s typically open Democrat policy. Nay, who has time or patience to debate with Democrats the principle behind what they’ve been working so hard on for some half decade?

    But it’s cathartic, isn’t it Mark, to take five minutes to brew up a short set of paragraphs and within them hang all the Left’s usual rhetorical suspects? Fourteen percent Congress, what fourteen percent Congress?

    • “…hiding behind the Constitution…” ???

      You might try reading it before accusing me of stifling right-wing mouthpieces, which I have never done. In fact, I fear for the right as much a the left as this admin chips away at justice, speech, privacy, and the separation of powers.

      And for someone who has no time to debate me, it didn’t stop you from coming here to debate me (if you call disparaging my sincerity debate).

  5. Debate and correction are two different things, Mark. Let’s try and keep them distinct:

    You might try reading it before accusing me of stifling right-wing mouthpieces, which I have never done.

    I didn’t say you advocated for the Return of the Night of the Living Fairness Doctrine, Mark, I was indulging a bit of generalization — that part about the Left — in replying to your obvious indulgence of what certainly appear to be quintessential Leftist phantoms; pretty much the preponderance of them, from what I see in your screed. Because, you know, I read it.

    In fact, I fear for the right as much a the left as this admin chips away at justice, speech, privacy, and the separation of powers.

    I bet you do, that being why you’re so quick to herein also condemn leftism’s assault on justice, speech, privacy, and the separation of powers, along with equal rights, capitalism, self-sufficiency, the sovereign citizen and the sovereign country. This piece being somewhat less of a pointed analysis of specific, factual, provable failures of conservatism as it is a meandering ode to the sort of sloppy point of view more characteristic of the typical moonbat. If I may be so bold. But I’ll take your disclaimer at face value, even in the absence of evidence it’s sound.

    And for someone who has no time to debate me, it didn’t stop you from coming here to debate me (if you call disparaging my sincerity debate).

    Not a debate, Mark. Consider it a consciousness-raising — a gentle correction of said screed for its uneven-handedness in pointing out not much more than one’s uneven-handed political fantasies.

    • “consciousness-raising” … What a load of crap.

      Do you really believe that you can appear on my doorstep with your superior, transcendent wisdom, and deliver salvation? What a patronizing and intellectually vacant attitude. But it is representative of the right’s propensity to replace debate with dogma.

      For more evidence of this, note that the site that you came from has refused to publish my comments there. Censorship?

  6. I must have missed it. Can you point out the censorship in your link.

    • Do you see any comments from me in that thread? I posted two. The censorship is that my comments do not appear.

  7. Alright, I’ve got your word on it. From my experience Jeff is very tolerant toward opposing views in the comments. I guess I’ll wait to see what he says about this.

  8. What a patronizing and intellectually vacant attitude.

    Incorrect again, Mark. (1) At worst, it’s only as patronizing as The Screed is clearly sanctimonious — can you say irony? — and (2) it’s not at all intellectually vacant if/when it implies hard questions about how Trutherism usurped liberalism so as to more than resemble your vague fictions about your stereotypical wingnuttery, which it surely does, day in and day out.

    You know, the Left peeing on free speech and Trutherism and The Screed, and the dogma that all that so evidently takes and so forth. The mark of bad religion, Mark, is that it replaces reality with fantasy. Ditto screeds.

    From there, if you want debate, debate the observable point of fact that terrorist rhetoric resembles American Democrat rhetoric. Remember, I didn’t say it, they all did and its on tape.

    So, at the least my minor comment can’t be quite as intellectually vacant as you hoped, rummaging around in your rhetoric bucket there, as it obviously just evoked the reflexive yet entirely out-of-context “intellectually vacant” barb itself, and that in reference to a dogmatic screed. A poor choice for yet another ironic situation of your apparent making.

    You see, I’m still not really debating you on the finer non-points of The Screed as much as offering a little open-mindedness to the progressively-minded. Consciousness? Raised, I hope.

    Ultimately it’s all about one’s choice of religious perspective, not about debating the irrational with the irrational.

    Ironically.

    Speaking of dogma, what kind of religion is Trutherism, the theology from which your screed seems derived? See, being, um, actually intellectually vacant, your screed handily qualifies as its own intellectual splinter group.

    PS: Jeff never censors comments. Ever (unless they’re deeply, slanderously personal — was yours? I’m sure it wasn’t.)

    PPS: Of course I can “appear on your doorstep”, Mark, the reason being to expose nonsense at your solicitation of comments. Unless you would like to censor my remarks.

    • I wouldn’t dare censor your remarks. I am happy to leave these rambling, nonsensical rants for all to see.

      For someone who has no time for this, you sure are spending a lot of time here.

      • I understand, Mark. I understand that it’s indeed all about what stuff looks like and never what it actually is. So off with my head…

  9. Mark’s comments were caught in the Spam filter. He used whitehouse.gov/government/eop-foia.html as one of his contacts, which Akismet Spam evidently doesn’t like.

    That he would immediately see a conspiracy to silence him where a less sinister explanation obtained is, I think, consistent with the tenor of the rest of Mark’s litany of indignation.

    The comments should now appear. In the future, should you run into problems, my email is available, and you might try using it to find out what’s going on before you jump to accusations of censorship.

    But then, you wouldn’t be you — so, it is what it is, I guess.

    • Should I bother to point out the irony that your spam filter eats links to Whitehouse.gov? 😉 I also use Akismet but haven’t had that problem here. Also, only one of my posts had that link.

      Nonetheless, I’ll go check your site now.

  10. I should follow up by noting that I’d hardly link your post then prevent you from defending it.

    You really need to stop fighting the caricatures in your head and face some actual people who disagree with you, and who find your hyperbole both daft and dangerous.

    • I thought I was facing the people who disagree with me. But your site ate my posts. Still, I left an apology at your site, and will here as well, now that my comments have finally been posted.

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