Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Did you get that? This guy is saying, on what is purported to be a mainstream media outlet, says that he hopes Osama bin Laden attacks the U.S. again so that true conservatives like himself can immediately start blaming Obama. Please note that Glenn Beck did not immediately jump in and tell this guy he was a lunatic. He actually agreed with him! They want another 3000+ innocent men, women and children, along with the heroic police and firefighters, to die just because they don’t like what President Obama is doing.
Besides sounding like the ravings of someone who should be in an insane asylum, this guy’s statement doesn’t make logical sense. Look at that last sentence. He is saying that Osama bin Laden should attack the U.S., which would no doubt result in mass casualties, because that is, after all, the point of such a terrorist attack, so that people will demand that the U.S. government protect them! That’s like burning down your house to get the fire department’s attention that they should protect your house from burning down! I mean, this is absolutely insane stuff. This is not anti-American? They are actively rooting for the epitome of a terrorist, those people for whom the U.S. must shred the Constitution and give up the very things that make this country free, to successfully murder 100's if not 1000's of American citizens!
I have said before, I know that every society has its fringe movements and individual lunatics. But how did this country ever come to the point where we have so many people who appear to be stark raving mad, and why are they now offered such a prominent soapbox as national television?
UPDATE: This story is starting to make the rounds in the blogosphere. Here is Steve Benen's take at Washington Monthly.
I was trying to think of how best to describe how spectacularly offensive this lunacy really is, but it looks like Adam Serwer beat me to it: "[U]nderstand, this is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you're not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying subprime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone's head. Unpatriotic is phosphate free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States."
I'd just add that there will almost certainly be no consequences for this. Two nutty conservatives can talk about the advantages of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- indeed, they can long for it -- without facing any real pushback at all. There won't be any suspensions or boycotts. No sponsors will withdraw. None of Beck's or Scheuer's allies will distance themselves, and neither one will be excluded from polite company.
Yep. That's totally true.
UPDATE II: From Sadly, No!
I can’t think of one other country in the entire history of the world where right-wing pundits go on TV and pine for a devastating nuclear attack on their own country just so they can say they were right all along. Not even Iranian government officials, crazy as they are, sit around saying, “Y’know, I hope the infidels bomb the hell out of us just so we can expose the Reformists as a bunch of wimps.”
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