I'm suffering outrage fatigue today. It's just too much. I started Tuesday morning in something of a state of shock, torn apart by two stories. The first was Kurt Eichenwald's story about the incredible bloodthirstiness and incompetence of the Bush administration before 9/11.
It wasn't just that they were negligent, or disinterested. As Digby pointed out, we knew that already. It's that they wanted war with Iraq, and anyone who wasn't playing that game was disregarded. I would be stunned if they knew 9/11 was going to happen, but they certainly bear responsibility for not doing more to prevent it. Of course, they got what they wanted in the end, so maybe this is part of the whole "conservatives create their own reality" thing.
So... we went to war with Iraq, for no reason, and it was very profitable for their friends. While other sectors suffered and became increasingly debt-driven, oil extraction and servicing, defence contracting, intelligence services, all made out very well.
Cost us a pretty big chunk of change, much of which has yet to be paid for.
But we mostly got out, thanks to Barack Obama.
Then we found and killed Osama Bin Laden, thanks to Barack Obama.
But on to the second story that broke my mind...
There was a front page post on 1/6th of Ohio Republicans believing that Romney killed Bin Laden. Written that way, it's kind of hilarious, but it's really so, so much worse than that.
You see, 47 percent of Ohio Republicans "don't know" who deserves more credit, between Romney and Obama. That means that nearly 2/3rds don't recognize that Obama did this.
They failed to stop 9/11, they ran the country into the fucking ground on the pretext of stopping those responsible, and after they failed at that, and Obama succeeded, they're like "Bin Laden who?"
So then this lovely sequence of events happened. We suffered the first serious unprovoked attack on a diplomatic unit under this presidency (compared to 11 under Bush). America was attacked, and before the day was out; before September 11th was over; Mitt Romney attacked us again. He attacked our sitting President and diplomatic staff, calling them "disgraceful", while failing to say anything negative about those who attacked us. A couple hours later, Reince Priebus jumped on that too.
That's right, the head of the Republican Party, and their candidate for President, couldn't resist blaming this Administration for this. They didn't have a clue what was going on, they just knew they needed to tell people anything bad was Obama's fault. It's like Mitt Romney is running to replace Rush Limbaugh, not Barack Obama.
So that brings us to now, where I see on Politico and other more diverse commenting environments, that conservatives are actively blaming Obama for this. That his "weak" foreign policy caused it.
Fuck them.
Want to talk about "weak" foreign policy? Let's talk about Bush on August 6th. Let's talk about "My Pet Goat" on September 11th. Let's talk about how his people drummed up support for a war of choice. Let's talk about "Mission Accomplished", and "Bring it On". Let's talk about 4488 dead and 33184 injured soldiers in Iraq. Let's talk about the 11 other attacks on American Diplomats during his Presidency.
Let's do some fucking arithmetic, as Clinton might say, and pound them into sand.
Wherever they spout this bullshit, let's stop letting them get away with it. Maybe start with Politico or HuffPo, Facebook, but follow them further. Tell them you'll take Obama's foreign policy record over Bush's any day of the week. Remind them why.
No quarter. I would love to say we can't play politics with 9/11, that we can't stoop to their level. But we can, and we must, get down there and kick their asses. The victims of 9/11, and all those soldiers, not to mention those still serving, need us to. They need to know that once they crossed that line of using an attack on America to attack other Americans, there was a price to be paid.
So let's go extract that price, and pound them into sand.
P.S. Besides being infuriated yesterday, I also filled out and submitted my absentee ballot request.