Remember How Liberals Said Every Aggressive Move Against Terrorists Was ‘A Provocation’? Why Is It A Good Thing Now?

I remember how Obama and the rest of the left decried every agressive move President George W. Bush made as being a provocation that would only result in more violence and make the new wave of terrorism being waged against America even worse.

The war on terror was a provocation.  The Iraq War was a provocation.  The terrorist prison facility at Guantanamo Bay was a provocation.  The surge strategy was a provocation.  And “provoking” the terrorists was the worst possible way to react, we were constantly told.

On the surge strategy that won the Iraq War, Obama had said:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Sending more troops to win the fight will increase the violence.  And that is a bad, bad thing. 

On the Iraq War as provocation (and therefore a bad thing), a critique of Obama’s apology in his Cairo Speech says it all:

On “violent extremism” Obama clung to the meme of “Afghanistan War good/Iraq War bad.” Obama said, “Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

This does not make sense. Iraq was not a “war of choice.” Saddam Hussein, for a variety of reasons (not just on WMDs, which everyone believed Hussein had and which he was certainly pursuing) had made himself intolerable. And Saddam was certainly not responding to diplomacy; that was the main reason the coalition forces marched.

Obama also made his first cringing apology. “The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals.” Well, no we did not. That is a flat out lie and a pander not only to liberal opponents of the war on terror but to the Muslim extremists Obama says he abhors.

It doesn’t matter that because of the very surge strategy that Obama personally demonized that Obama’s vice president was able to actually say the following about the Iraq War that Obama also demonized:

“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

I would point out that George Bush won his “war of choice” that “provoked strong differences.”  And Obama – even after eventually abandoning his own demqgoguery on the “surge” to implement a surge of his own in Afghanistan, and even after using Bush’s own general which the left demonized to implement that surge – is floundering badly in “the good war” of Afghanistan.  Which is why Afghanistan sure won’t be “one of the great achievements of the Obama administration.”

George Bush “stupidly’ chose to fight a war against a tyrant in a terrain that the United States could actually win.  The vastly more brilliant Obama chose to put all his marbles in an Afghanistan that has been the graveyard of empires for a thousand years.  Afghanistan also happens to feature a terrain that almost entirely nullifies our vast tactical and strategic advantages.  But that’s what you do when you think you’re too damn smart for your own good, I guess.

On Guantanamo Bay as a provocation, Obama said:

“Guantanamo is probably the No. 1 recruitment tool that is used by these jihadist organizations,” Obama said. “And we see it in the websites that they put up. We see it in the messages that they’re delivering.”

It didn’t matter that Guantanamo Bay was absolutely necessary, no matter how much it provoked people who were determined to be provoked.  That is just a fact, and facts don’t matter to demagogues.  It’s just an “inconvenient truth” that Gitmo is still open, and WILL REMAIN OPEN as long as Obama is president.

Then there was that nasty rhetorical phrase “war on terror” that was clearly too provocative, so Obama rebranded it as an “overseas contingency operation.”

The one thing that couldn’t be more clear: don’t you dare provoke these people.  It’s bad to provoke.  The mainstream media would crawl all over you if you dared to provoke.

So I’m left sitting here wondering how provocation suddenly went from a bad thing to a good thing just because the guy doing all the provoking was a Democrat.

Obama’s Middle East policies have resulted in dramatically escalated increases in violence throughout the Arab world.  Which would have been terrible if Bush had had anything to do with it, but which is okay because a liberal did it.  So the mainstream media has refused to harangue Obama on that unintended consequence of his budding Utopia.

In Libya, you’ve got a lot more of this “untended consequence” regarding Obama’s nearlty forgotten little third war he started in Libya:

TRIPOLI, Libya – Libyans shouting for revenge buried Moammar Gadhafi’s second youngest son to the thundering sound of anti-aircraft fire Monday, as South Africa warned that the NATO bombing that killed him would only bring more violence.

Libya’s leader did not attend the tumultuous funeral of 29-year-old Seif al-Arab, but older brothers Seif al-Islam and Mohammed paid their respects, thronged by a crowd of several thousand. Jostling to get closer to the coffin, draped with a green Libyan flag, mourners flashed victory signs and chanted “Revenge, revenge for you, Libya.”

Three of Gadhafi’s grandchildren, an infant and two toddlers, also died in Saturday’s attack, which NATO says targeted one of the regime’s command and control centers. Gadhafi and his wife were in the compound at the time, but escaped unharmed, Libyan officials said, accusing the alliance of trying to assassinate the Libyan leader.

NATO officials have denied they are hunting Gadhafi to break the battlefield stalemate between Gadhafi’s troops and rebels trying for the past 10 weeks to depose him. Rebels largely control eastern Libya, while Gadhafi has clung to much of the west, including the capital, Tripoli.

But of course NATO is denying that we’re hunting Gadafi in violation of United Nations policies against targeting political leaders.  After all, we’ve even denied we’re at war at all, preferring the nicer-sounding euphamism of “kinetic military action.”  “War” sounds so mean, and hardly something a brilliant liberal would do, after all.  The far more erudite liberals launch wave after wave of “kinetic military actions” instead.  And no matter how many of Gaddafi’s compounds somehow accidentally get targeted and blown up, that’s clearly all it is.

Now we’ve got Obama (almost as though Obama were himself one of the machine-gun toting SEALs) killing Osama bin Laden.  That clearly won’t provoke anybody.

America’s relationship with Pakistan was already at an all-time low due to Obama incessantly flying Predators over their country and launching rocket attacks on them.  But so what?  Provocation is a good thing now, because Obama is doing it instead of George Bush.  And if you’re brilliant, you don’t have to kowtow to such trivialities as consistency.

And so what if Obama ordered American troops to launch a military attack on Pakistani soil without bothering to even inform the Pakistanis?  No harm, no foul.  So what if we violated their sovereignty?  Obama is the leader of the world, and the sooner the world recognized that he is an imperial president, the better.  If you don’t like Obama pursuing “cowboy” tactics, or engaging in “you’re either with us or you’re against us” policies, well, you’re just not very enlightened.  Because it’s not fascist unless Republicans do it.

And al Qaeda, whom the left was so worried about provoking when George Bush was the guy doing the provoking?  They’ll get over it.  So we can ignore the little threat they just made less than a week ago about unleashing a “nuclear hellstorm” upon America if we killed or captured Osama bin Laden.

You think of Gitmo, the surge strategy, rendition, domestic eavesdropping, the Patriot Act, indefinite detentions, military tribunals and a host of other things Obama demonized George Bush and Dick Cheney over, and not only are they doing the same things, but they’re doing even worse.  But the same mainstream media that tore into George Bush like pitbulls going after raw bloody meat don’t seem to have time to dwell on Obama’s blatant hypocrisies.

Nor does Bush get any credit for having been right when Obama and the Democrats were so completely wrong by their own massive reversals to the Bush policies now.

We are watching a level of propaganda and fundamental hypocrisy overtake the United States of America by both the media and the White House that ought to simply stun you.