When it comes to terrorism, the right has a narrative. Barack Obama is terrible at fighting it. If he were more like George W. Bush -- the president who saw the world's most deadly terrorist attack happen under his watch -- then he'd be doing things right. Never mind that, by their own arguments, Obama has been wildly successful in fighting terrorism. The rightwing line in defense of Bush's crimes of torture and wiretapping has always been that we haven't been attacked since 9/11 (which isn't at all true, by the way). Ignore the worst intelligence failure in the history of America -- Bush supposedly did a good job after that. I guess you get a do-over or something when you're a new president -- and a Republican.But Obama's record is already better than Bush's. He hasn't needed that do-over. The big catastrophic attack we were warned about during the campaign still hasn't happened, meaning that President Obama has already beat Bush's record. Every day after 9/11/09 without a huge, flaming disaster is one more day that this president has kept us safe longer than the previous president managed. But those are facts and logic. We've already established that facts and logic don't fly in rightwing world.
Some, like the perpetually boobish Rep. Pete Hoekstra, argue that a failed attempt at terrorism under Obama counts as a bona fide "terrorist attack." This is proof that Obama's a huge failure. But these same people won't count failed attacks under Bush, which means Bush was a huge success. Yeah, it makes my head hurt too. I think I might be allergic to either stupid or ridiculous. It's hard to pin down which it is, since Bush apologists tend to give you both at once... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
