By Isidore F. Stone, Washington Correspondent with
Spy Archivist Aula Minerva
The dastardly sneak attack on our homeland perpetrated by a [checks notes] Chines balloon gave rise to the usual Republican drivel about how Joe Biden and the Democrats compromised national security by [checks notes again] shooting down the balloon over water after tracking it and jamming its communications.
And the media churned out the usual stenography, according to Media Matters:
It's hardly unexpected that Republicans would seize on anything, even a shredded balloon, to reiterate the point that you can't trust Democrats to protect national security. They've been doing it nonstop since 1969, and the cumulative impact of the charge has been devastating. Here's data from Gallup:
Notice the only time Democrats held a (narrow) advantage was during the Iraq War meltdown four years after the Bush-Cheney invasion.
It's a cycle of stupidity: Republicans claim that they protect our nation, wave a lot of flags, and shoot off a lot of guns. Democrats avoid the issue, thus letting the public conclude that only Republicans care about national security. The media notices the polling and reinforces the perception that Republicans are better at protecting the homeland.
The only problem with this feedback loop: it's a load of bollocks. The actual Republican record since 1969 on national security has been a disaster.
You young whippersnappers may not remember Tricky Dick Nixon, the Republican who won the 1968 election after the Democrats became mired in the pointless morass of the Vietnam War.
Nixon's task was to end the war without appearing to lose it, at least not immediately. He called this brilliant scheme “Peace With Honor.” Although this plan cost hundreds of thousands of lives, it insulated Nixon from blame and allowed him instead to paint Democrats as yellow if not pinko surrender monkeys.
This was Max Frankel's summary in the October 17, 1969 New York Times, two days after massive peaceful nationwide antiwar protests:
By the way, the “extremists” turned out to be absolutely right and Nixon's senseless bloody prolongation of the war did nothing, except created the myth of Republican superiority on national security.
Speaking of extremists, the previous day's Times carried this account of Republican Massachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent's response to pro-war hecklers:
He was the last decent Republican.
Anyone here remember St. Ronald of Bitburg? He too was a master of pretending to protect national security. He sacrificed 230 Marines in Beirut for no purpose that was evident then or now, and then covered his tracks by winning a splendid little, very little, war on the tiny island of Grenada.
Then after honoring Nazi SS war dead at Bitburg, he invented the fantasy that he could build an impenetrable nuclear defense which he called Star Wars. Those who correctly pointed out that it could never work were branded as Kremlin stooges:
(The New York Times, October 27, 1986.)
In case you've lost interest in this 40-year boondoggle, we've spent trillions on Star Wars but still have no actual defense against nuclear attack.
Moving to this millennium, after the Republicans under Bush and Dead-Eye Dick Cheney ignored the intelligence pointing to the strong likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack on the United States and then invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, those who opposed their splendid Iraq War were once again branded as weak on homeland security:
Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out on Friday at critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, ridiculing their arguments against the war as naïve and dangerous in a speech that was a culmination of a campaign by the White House to regain support for the postwar effort.
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| Only Democrats can save us! |
Mr. Cheney's remarks came at the end of a contentious week that included President Bush's announcement of a reorganization intended to give the White House more control over the Iraq occupation; a public spat between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, over control of the mission; and growing violence on the ground in Iraq.
The vice president's appearance before an invited audience of 200 people at the conservative Heritage Foundation here capped a weeklong White House public-relations offensive aimed at rebutting a new wave of criticism of the war and the postwar effort.
In his 25-minute speech, Mr. Cheney defended the administration's handling of Iraq policy and its larger vision in combating global terrorism. His searing statements came across as direct attacks on critics in Congress and among the Democratic presidential candidates.
Again, it was the Democratic critics who were right about everything, including their contention that the $2 trillion transformation of Iraq into a quasi-failed Iranian puppet regime did grave damage to U.S. national security. Thanks to Republicans.
The same threadbare nonsense was recycled as recently as last year, when President Biden finally extricated the United States from the 21-year Republican quagmire in Afghanistan.
As long as we're comparing the respective capabilities of Democrats and Republicans in the fight against terrorism (remember that?), remind us again which party's President tracked down Osama bin Laden and sent him on a one-way dive to the Six Thousand Fathom Undersea Beach Resort. And which party's President let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora and then tried to cover up the debacle.
So after the debacles of Vietnam, Beirut, Star Wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq, why should anyone cede any ground to Republicans on the issue of national security? They shouldn't.
But if Democrats refuse to forthrightly state that they are the only party that can be trusted to protect U.S. national security, in contrast to a Republican Party dominated by Russian stooges and insurrectionists, how can you expect our media to state the obvious truth:
You can't trust Republicans to protect our country.
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