House GOP Leader Teams Up With Cheney to Threaten Terrorism

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

^{Image courtesy of David Drexler}

It is perhaps unsurprising that House Republicans voted against Obama's stimulus package as a block. They are reeling from their party's electoral defeats last November and saw no political reason to go with the flow.

But there may be a more insidious reason for their unity, something that fits into a larger strategy. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), the National Republican Congressional Committee chair, suggested in an interview with the National Journal's Hotline On Call that House Republicans are taking political cues from terrorists.

From the On Call report:

[House Republicans], he added, should also "understand insurgency" in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."
^{*Emphasis ours}

Though Sessions was the one publicly heralding the Taliban's tactics, House Republicans may be taking cues from former Vice President Dick Cheney as well. Cheney has long demonstrated his affinity for fear tactics and he's not stopping now that he's out of office. In a recent interview with Politico, Cheney warned that if Obama stays the course of closing Guantánamo and following the Constitution, we are more likely to suffer another attack.

Cheney was widely criticized for the remarks among both Democrats and security experts. Some interpreted his words merely as a defense of the Bush Administration's construction of the so-called war on terror, while others saw it as a fear tactic.

Cheney's caveat mirrored the scowling videos distributed by Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Both threaten terror if their warnings aren't heeded. Cheney was essentially calling out to Sessions and conservatives across the country to rise up and take arms against Obama's policies.

In a special comment on his show last night, Keith Olbermann called for Cheney to leave the country, citing his comments to Politico as an attempt to "undermine" the current administration and endanger the country:

"With damnable words like these, sir, you help no American; you protect no American; you serve no American. You only aid and abet those who would destroy this nation from within or without."

The difference between the way Republicans are threatening Obama and the way terrorists threaten America is smaller than one would want to believe. Instead of attacking the World Trade Center, they are attacking the president's strategy to save our economy. Instead of hijacking planes with innocent Americans aboard, they'll hijack Obama's plan to provide healthcare to millions of uninsured people.

The bottom line is that Republicans learned a lot from their eight years in power. But instead of gleaning constructive lessons from their own failures, they learned destructive ones from our enemies' successes.

Thankfully, many Americans have learned how to read fear-mongering from these desperate groups as the "last throes" of the insurgency.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS