Bush made it all up, you see. The whole thing. And just as I, through my mad Zionist skillz, am apparently able (in the eyes of some rabid critics) to cast embarrassing teachings into the Qur’an and Hadith, so the President has been able to create centuries of jihad warfare against unbelievers.
By Beth Fouhy for Associated Press, with thanks to James:
NEW YORK (AP) – Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.
In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.
“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set””that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”
Of course, the terrorists themselves have nothing to do with creating that impression. They are not actors of themselves. They can only react to our provocations. Edwards, like so many on the Left, does not recognize that he himself, in assuming this, is manifesting the same ethnocentrism and paternalism that he explicitly abhors.