Andrew McCarthy Needs a Map

You might find the latest garbage from Andrew McCarthy to be simply nothing more than a small bag in the heap of garbage coming from the neocons this week:

We are reading only about 24 arrests today. If we were already in the heralded antiwar world of Ned Lamont and the war-against-the-war crowd, it could be much different. We could just as easily be reading about ten jumbo jets exploded out of the sky. Or 3,000 murdered innocents – mostly American and British citizens.

To me, it’s just down right comical. His title talked about London and Connecticut, which I trust he could find on a map. But I doubt he could figure out the distance between Baghdad (as in the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that Lamont and many Americans now realize was a gift to Al Qaeda) and the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where these wannabe terrorists trained. McCarthy, however, continued with some oldie but moldie rightwing talking points:

The antiwar Left has a conveniently flexible moral compass. Consequently, the Clinton era Echelon program was fine, but Bush’s NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program is an impeachable offense. Mishandling classified information by a Clinton CIA director was worthy of a pardon, and destroying classified information (and lying to investigators about it) by a former Clinton national-security adviser was worthy of a pass, but leaking the unremarkable fact that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA is the crime of the century. Bombing Kosovo without U.N. approval was a moral imperative; invading Iraq after over a dozen U.N. resolutions is a violation of international law. Renditions conducted between 1994 and 2000 were just good national-security sense; renditions conducted between 2001 and 2006 are war crimes. Indicting Osama bin Laden in 1998 and then doing nothing to capture him while he bombed two American embassies and an American naval destroyer, killing hundreds, was aggressive yet intelligently modulated counterterrorism; allowing Osama bin Laden to evade capture in Tora Bora while killing and capturing hundreds of his operatives and decimating his hierarchy is irresponsibly incompetent.

Let’s take this one by one. Is McCarthy trying to say that the outing of a CIA operative as well as her team that was trying to ascertain information about Iran’s nuclear capabilities something that assisted the UK in catching these wannabe terrorists? And yes – Kosovo was a war that the rightwing opposed. After all, genocide in Europe is AOK with Andrew McCarthy. Incidentally, the dishonest case for war in 2002 did not include as its primary motive any allegations that Saddam was engaged in ongoing genocide.

But I am glad that Mr. McCarthy is hoping we can one day bring Osama bin Laden to justice – since it was the incompetence of the Bush Administration that allowed bin Laden to evade capture in Tora Bora. It’s just a shame that this White House took their eye off of going after Al Qaeda since then to focus on Iraq.