When in Doubt, Attack the Dissenters

Bob doesn't like it when people disagree with his morals He attacks dissenters and believes they are horrible people. Bob followed this pattern today when the reviled the protesters who marched on Washington over the weekend.

Bob claimed that the insurgents watch news coverage of the protests and are emboldened by them. Bob thinks that al-qaeda and the insurgents sit around, watch CNN, and are convinced to continue the fight. (I guess the insurgents can’t get enough of that dreamy Wolf Blitzer.) Anyway, in Bob’s mind, protesting the war prolongs it.

To support his thesis, Bob cites a Newsmax article that quotes North Vietnamese generals as saying “Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement…[it] gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

First, citing Newmax for anything is highly suspect. Their journalistic ethics are, at best, questionable. This particular article was published as an attack on John Kerry during an election year. And trusting Newsmax for news is like trusting Ralph Reed with your money. You know it’s all going to end in a big scam.

Second, Bob misunderstands cause and effect. To use cause and effect properly, the “writer explains a situation, condition, or event (effects) and explains why it occurred or reasons it exists (causes).”

If you listen carefully, Bob doesn’t do this at all. He theorizes that Iraqis have nothing better to do than sit around and watch CNN. And how, pray tell, are they doing that?

The average resident of Baghdad receives less than 6 hours of electricity a day. Areas outside Baghdad receive less. I doubt Iraqis are spending their time watching TV, especially when the have no decent hospitals, sewers, or homes.

And by the way, watching CNN isn't a priority for the tens of thousands of people “now living in public buildings, parks, cemeteries, and soccer fields...in urgent need of shelter, food, medicine and clean water.”

So exactly how are the insurgents emboldened by war protesters? Life in Iraq is so bad right now that I doubt that most Iraqis even know that there are protests. At present, most Iraqis are are fighting for survival, so I cannot understand how Bob thinks that Americans voicing their opinions effects anything in Iraq.

And since attacking others is much easier than claiming responsibility, Bob opts to ignore the actual causes of continuing violence in Iraq: The policy disasters and failures of this administration.

In the end, we know who Bob will blame for the failures in Iraq: Anyone who refused to agree with Bob.