Thursday, January 26, 2006

Rant of the Week: Why is Bin Laden Still Alive?

Why is Osama Bin Laden still alive over four years after the horrible events of September 11, 2001? That's the first question and here's the second: why aren't Democrats in Washington asking that question? Why? Are the consultants that advise Democrats in Washington so mesmerized by Karl Rove that they believe that any reference to Bush's failures to capture Bin Laden are bound to backfire? We just don't get it.

Here's how we see it. Bush and Rove are going to beat up Democratic candidates in 2006 on questions of national security. They are going to imply, and through their media surrogates come out and expressly say, that Democrats can't be trusted to protect the American people. They are going to continue to link the increasingly unpopular Iraqi war with their "War on Terror" and use that connection to get votes. They did it in 2002, they did it in 2004, and they are going to try and do it in 2006.

One way to address this issue is to point out to the American people that it's been over 1500 days since 9-11 and Osama Bin Laden is still alive to taunt Americans. Our first concern should have been to destroy the leadership of Al Queada. We successfully overthrew the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which had sheltered Bin Laden, but then, failed to capture him at the battle of Tora Bora. We allowed him to escape by depending on Pakistani and Afghan warlords instead of using American troops. After his escape we got embroiled in Iraq instead of finishing the job of capturing and killing Bin Laden.

It seems to us that Democrats should call the Bush Administration on its incompetence in both not capturing Bin Laden and in how it has prosecuted the war in Iraq. Instead, we allow the Republicans and the Bush Administration to paint our party as being not trustworthy with the nation's security. This is our suggestion: when Republicans talk about Bush's success in handling terrorists, they should be asked again and again, "Where is Bin Laden and why is he still alive?"
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MCDAC gives permission for the reproduction of the above without attribution.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just thought you'd want to know that John Kerry DID challenge the Bush administration on this. Kerry was responding to Chris Matthews' attack on Michael Moore. Kerry's challenge is on a major blog outlet (I accessed it through democraticunderground)

I do agree, though. Democrats need to do more with this, say more about this, and stop letting Karl Rove and the Republican propaganda machine set the Democrats' message.

Team Member said...

MCDAC is aware that Senator John Kerry recently commented on bin Laden being alive, but we need more than Kerry doing this, we need every Democrat in leadership positions in Washington D.C. making the same comments.

Team Member said...

We understand why Republicans don't want bin Laden mentioned, but we don't understand why Democrats aren't mentioning it.