I know there have been a few diaries written about the attack today in Pakistan on a Marriot, but I looked through a few and didn't see the news I was looking for, or actually the news I was hoping not to see. But in the NY Times article it was buried toward the middle:
Witnesses said they dragged dozens of bodies from the lobby of the hotel and an adjacent parking lot, including those of a number of foreigners. Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the State Department, issued a statement saying at least one American citizen was killed and several others were injured.
This seems to me to be a pretty big deal, that American citizens were injured and killed in a terrorist attack. Yet it appears to be getting short shrift.
You would think, given the right wing rhetoric of the past few years and the media attitude toward terrorism as it affects American politics, that McCain would be all over this. I expected screaming about how we have to keep taking the fight to the terrorists and can't cut and run and must stay the course and how Obama wants to surrender.
But it's silent for now. The media is not headlining the American casualties, and the campaigns are silent. The traditional talking idiots out there appear to not be talking, though the common wisdom is always that terror attacks are good for the Republicans.
But this one shouldn't be, and we shouldn't let it. The situation in Pakistan, the country where Osama bin Laden now lives because Bush lost him in Tora Bora, had devolved over the past six years of addressing terrorism through military means. Al Qaeda has had at least one major attack annually since we invaded Iraq, including in western countries like England and Spain (that is in Europe, you know).
This attack is evidence that the Bush policy regarding terrorism John McCain supports is not working. It comes just days after Lehman and Merril and AIG demonstrated the Bush economic policies John McCain supports are not working.
That should be hammered home. The domestic side of Bush/McCain policy is a proven failure, the international side of Bush/McCain policy is a proven failure, and we have an opportunity in just a few weeks to put an end to both.
Update: From the LA Times, another American died in last week's terrorist attack in Yemen -- "State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the death of Susan Elbaneh, and said the woman from Lackawanna, N.Y., was among at least 16 victims of an attack that authorities said bore the hallmarks of a coordinated al-Qaida strike."