Romney

Romney last night:(from Iglesias)
"We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

You can check out Matt's take on this, but if you don't see it in this quote, it's obvious. Mitt Romney, while displaying himself as a very strong conservative candidate has little idea of what the real problem is. Yes, Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Queda are groups that support terrorist action for their own purpose, but the Muslim Brotherhood does not. This goes back to the entire philosophy of conservative politics in the realm of the war on terror. Instead of looking at why we're being attacked and who's actually doing the attacking, they are just intent on disgracing Islam as a nation of terror and a religion that hates the United States because we have freedom.

First of all, none of that last sentence is reality. Reality is that there are several small groups of Islamic Extremists that have formed over the years terrorist cells. These cells are intent on causing destruction for a myriad of different reasons depending on the events, locations and players involved. Of these reasons, the BS of "because we're free" is out of place and ridiculous. It shows how little we understand about our real enemies. Also the demonization of the entire religion of Islam, or even fundamentalist Islam is also out of place. Islamic faith is based on peace and love. What I believe the real terrorists are trying to stop is an obvious imperialistic nature that the United States uses to implement it's ideals into other nations without their overall consent. This creates culture shocks and economic instability for those in power in these third world nations and is direct cause for some form of backlash. They use terror, because it works. It works especially well with an administration that uses it for it's own political gain by keeping Americans largely afraid. If we were to address these issues and be honest about them, it would be a different situation altogether. Does that mean there would be no violence? No terror? Of course not. But it would change the views of many outsiders that are wooed by these terrorist nations because of how wrong we are on so many things right now. Iraq is another example of this, but not in the framework of a terrorist state that we're failing to control, but in that it's a nation of people that don't desire to have American culture and politics to dictate their lives. The only connections to Iraq and the war on terror are and continue to be fabrications of the administration and not much more. Sectarian violence does not equate to Al Queda or Hamas, it equates to a Civil War.

Too Hot for TNR has some good points on this too, including the fact that our President makes this same mistake regularly.