Screaming Penguin

Ok, so I am going to go to bat for a Republican in the first time in a while here:

Tapped notes: You won't want to miss this one. GOP House Majority Leader John Boehner wants you to know that it's OK if Republicans use images of people killed on 9/11 for political purposes, but at the same time, it's very very bad indeed if Dems show pictures of flag-draped coffins. Boehner's just not very good at explaining why this should be so. Maybe because there is no plausible or consistent explanation? As you no doubt know by now, the GOP successfully put up a fuss about a recent Internet ad posted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with pictures of flag-draped coffins in it. Dems subsequently pulled the ad. One problem: Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 aired an ad that showed firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Why is one OK by the GOP but not the other? Well, someone decided to ask this question of Boehner. The results weren't pretty. Today's Cincinatti Enquirer has the exchange:

Questioned by reporters on what the difference was, Boehner seemed tongue-tied. "These were American citizens killed by terrorists. That is a very different policy issue than American soldiers dying on the battlefield protecting the rights and freedoms of American people." "How so?" a reporter asked. "How so? You want me to describe the difference between men and women of the military out there defending the American people, and victims - victims - of terrorist activities?" Boehner asked. "They were both killed by opponents, right? Terrorists or Islamic insurgents?" a reporter pressed. An exasperated Boehner said: "The World Trade Center victims were victims of a terrorist act here on our shore and I think all Americans were appalled that this did in fact happen. But I think the differences, in terms of the images, are as clear as night and day."

You know, we keep hearing that we're in Iraq so we can fight the terrorists there rather than fight them here. So that would mean that Americans killed in Iraq are victims of terrorism just as victims of the 9/11 attacks were, right?

No. It doesn't mean they are victims of terrorism. And forgive me if I defend the 9/11 attackers here but excuse me for a second. There were, in effect, 4 attacks on September 11. Two of which I would call "terrorism" (The WTC towers) and two of which weren't. I know this will float like a lead baloon, but crashing planes into the Pentagon (Flight 77) and the White House (Flight 93) are not acts of terrorism, but asymmetrical warfare against military targets with what the "civilized" world would call unacceptable collateral damage.. Much like Israel looks like an ass right now because Hezbollah is attacking tanks, soldiers, army installations and warships, and Israel is firing missiles into civilian areas (spare me the justifications) we have to take accusations of "terrorism" seriously and draw some kind of line. Boner, sorry, Boehner is right here. Men and women who signed up for that kind of duty getting killed is not "terrorism". However, the problems in Iraq of sectarian violence definitely fall into that category. We have created a "haven" of "terrorist activity", if not genocide. Passing over our morally reprehensible inaction in Sudan, we can't really complain too much about this though.