Amid last week's knee-jerk Republican response to Lamont's victory and the latest installment of Fear Factor: America Under Siege, an extraordinary Republican talking point slid by, I think, without the discussion it merits. In what was clearly a coordinated media push intended to spin the meaning of the Connecticut primary, both Tony Snow and Ken Mehlman buttressed their arguments by asserting that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the result of flawed American foreign policy. Quite a concept. In itself, this is an extraordinary admission from the party that ridicules its political opponents for
blaming America first and simply bizarre for an Administration whose leader has sputtered for five years that they hate us for our freedom. But what's truly surreal is who they're now blaming for the American foreign policy that resulted in 9/11.
Below the fold: Snow and Mehlman throw Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush under the bus (with Colin Powell, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Dick Cheney being dragged behind).
Last Wednesday,
Tony Snow explained that George H.W. Bush's decision not to topple Saddam Hussein in 1991 resulted in Osama bin Laden carrying out the 9/11 attacks:
Now, when the United States walked away, in the opinion of Osama bin Laden in 1991, bin Laden drew from that the conclusion that Americans were weak and wouldn't stay the course, and that led to September 11th.*
I can't believe he actually said that. Not only is Snow indicting Poppy Bush for a policy that projected weakness (ouch! at least he didn't say wimpy), but his statement also implicates the members of Bush Senior's Administration who counseled the strategy -- Colin Powell, James Baker, and notably Bush's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney. Cheney explained it like this in 1992:
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
Wow. There you have it. It turns out that Dick Cheney really is responsible for 9/11. Some intrepid reporter really ought to ask Deadeye Dick about this. And, really, I'd love to know what Bush Senior has to say about these charges. I wonder if it has anything to do with his recent attempt to convince his son to replace Rumsfeld. If so, it would be typical for Shrub to respond by essentially calling his dad a wimp. Yee-ha! Father and son fight it out on the world stage, thousands die. What did we do to deserve this??
Oh yeah, someone might want to get a quote from Nancy Reagan, as well. (Or maybe Ron Jr. has something to say.) On the same day that Tony Snow laid into the Poppy-Colin-Dick appeasement cabal, Ken Mehlman, appearing on Hardball, put the blame for 9/11 on none other than Ronald Reagan. Mehlman argued that U.S. pull-out from Beirut following the Marine barracks bombings in 1983 was the beginning of the kind of U.S. foreign policy that led to 9/11. Chris Matthews seemed shocked, asking Mehlman if he was actually blaming Reagan for 9/11. Interestingly, Mehlman refused to answer yes or no, instead babbling about how Reagan is his hero. He may be your hero, Kenny, but you just blamed the guy for 9/11. (The transcript for this episode of Hardball, 8/9/06, is missing from the MSNBC web site.)
[UPDATE: 12:30pm EST]
As noted by inclusiveheart in comments, the video of Mehlman's appearance is available on the Hardball site.
Uh, have these people simply lost their minds? I mean, WTF?! And, hey, I'm not arguing with them. I'll leave that to somebody else. But what the hell are they doing, blaming previous Republican administrations for the policies that led to 9/11? The Democrats are in disarray, you say? If so, I don't know how you'd describe what's going on within the Republican leadership. The Bush Administration and GOP are in the process of a complete meltdown. It's not just the Dems they're lashing out at. They've managed to alienate the traditional Republican establishment and seem to want to rub it in. They're acting like a cornered, deranged animal chasing its own tail. This campaign season is not going to be a pretty spectacle.
*[UPDATE: 8:10am EST]
I think it's also worth mentioning that Snow's explanation for why bin Laden began plotting against the U.S. is in direct contradiction to what seems to be a universally reported fact: Bin Laden was angry because the U.S. used Saudi Arabia to stage attacks on Iraq during the Gulf War. And his anger was fomented by our continued presense in Saudi Arabia after the war. He was pissed because we didn't leave. What is Snow talking about?? These guys have gone off the tracks.