CHARLES P. PIERCE: CNN Mongers the ISIS Fear Then Wonders Where It Came From

[kpete]

.........the vainglorious louts who currently are running for president over here. Or the fearmongering gombeens who run cable television networks that have turned a pretty buck hyping up a bunch of savages in second-hand pick-up trucks into an existential threat to the most powerful nation on earth, and then have had their hired coiffures express surprise when the poll numbers indicate that they have done that job all too well.

A whopping 59% of Democrats are unhappy with the progress President Obama has made on the war on terror, along with 86% of Republicans and 69% of independents. Democrats are nearly split on who is specifically winning, though, with 52% believing neither side is. But a majority—55%—of Republicans feel the terrorist are winning.

Since the Paris shootings, and certainly since the shootings in San Bernardino, through the efforts of our leading television news stars, Daesh has been converted into the greatest threat to Western civilization since the Battle of Tours. They are supervillains with mad computer skillz and secret Muslim mind-tricks who can turn Your Children into implacable murder machines. They are so powerful that, to defeat them, we need a 500-ship Navy, a sky full of malfunctioning F-35 strike fighters, another couple of billion down the rathole of missile defense, and Marco Rubio in the White House before we can feel safe. They are too strong for our current military to defeat, but simply electing Chris Christie will scare them straight. Even without any aircraft of their own, they can stand up to our $150 billion Air Force, but the public scorn of a vulgar talking yam will be enough to bring them to their knees. If you want to see what losing the war on terror really looks like, don't look to the Middle East. Instead, watch the television commercials approved by the various Republican presidential candidates. The three Democratic candidates are better, but not by much.

The fact is that you can't win a "war" on terror any more than you can win a "war" on hate or a "war" on any other easily activated human emotion, if there are enough powerful institutions that can profit from its activation. It's really up to the rest of us, as active citizens in a self-governing republic, to keep things in perspective about the genuine dangers and the fantastical ones by which other people profit. There are genuine threats to our safety—bridges near collapse, gas leaks that may ruin a whole town, the unfettered access to firearms and the readiness to use them. That should be inspiration enough for We, The People to fulfill our pledge to each other to provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare. John Quincy Adams was only half-right; if America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, then it ought not to create them here at home, either.


http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a40810/ramadi-liberated-will-cnn-notice/

[Scuba]

1. POUND those war drums, POUND those war drums, POUND those war drums, POUND those war drums ...