It’s Not Just Sticker Shock:Edwards Goes AWOL On Terror War

Cartoon Courtesy of Gary Varvel
Indianapolis Star

Story By Michael Graham
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The Boston Herald

The 'war on terror' is a bumper sticker and a political slogan, that's all it is. That’s all it's ever been.
--Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, June 2007

When you're slogging through the security line at Logan (Airport) this summer, the heady scent of strangers' feet wafting about you, try to remember what those cheerful TSA professionals are really looking for... Bumper stickers.

In Scotland, flames billowed from the Glasgow airport after two men plowed their "bumper sticker" into the terminal. In London, two more "bumper stickers" were parked outside nightclubs but, fortunately, failed to detonate. In Yemen, a suicide bomber... er, "sloganeer" blew himself up at the site of an ancient temple, killing eight. In Thailand, police arrested 50 Muslim men found with (ahem) "bumper sticker" making materials in a region where thousands of non-Muslims have been murdered.

Meanwhile, Iranian terror sponsors are using Lebanese Hezbollah to kill U.S. soldiers hunting al-Qaeda in Iraq. All this news from just one weekend. And Edwards says there’s no "war on terror." Edwards' theory isn’t new. Michael Moore has been saying "there is no terrorist threat" since 2001. Our own Sen. John Kerry - whose 1997 book on global threats to the U.S. never mentioned Osama bin Laden - still insists that al-Qaeda terror is a crime problem, not a military one. War? Terror? What are you, a sucker? You probably think the Pentagon got hit by a passenger jet, too.

The enlightened left sees through all this. We knuckle-draggers see yet another attempted bombing of yet another Western target by yet another group of Muslim men, and think "Hey, 'war on terror'." The left sees the bombs, the gas canisters, the nails (in Israel, the "bumper sticker" crowd coats the nails with rat poison) and sees something other than a widespread terror movement inspired by common theology and uncommon hatred.

When Brian Williams asked the Democratic presidential candidates to answer (by a show of hands) if they believe "there's such a thing as a global war on terror," the only top-tier candidate whose hand shot up was Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama reluctantly gave an insincere wave. But Edwards? Never.

So, if there's no global terror threat, how does the left explain the guy on fire climbing out the window of an explosives-laden car as shown on CNN? Spontaneous human combustion?

Poverty.

Poverty causes terrorism, the left insists, despite the fact that: a) there are at least 1 billion impoverished non-Muslims in the world who aren’t blowing up nightclubs; and b) two of the plotters just arrested are doctors. In fact, most of the 9/11 and 7/7 attackers were relatively affluent and well educated.

Advocates of the "bumper sticker" theory sometimes claim that terrorism is the last resort of the desperate. The New York Times calls the latest would-be bombers part of Europe's "disenfranchised South Asian population." Got that? Not "terrorists." Certainly not "Muslims." Disenfranchised.

Tony Blair doesn’t agree. The former prime minister rejects the idea that Muslims who watched teachers executed by the Taliban are “oppressed” by the nations who liberated them. "We need to stand up to these people and say, 'It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.' "

How can John Edwards watch the news from London (or Scotland or Yemen or Iraq) and not see that? Why can’t he grasp the notion of Islamist-inspired violence supported by extremist regimes and targeting Western values?

Maybe if we could fit it on a bumper sticker.


Cartoon Courtesy of Michael Ramirez
Investor's Business Daily