the very freedoms we cherish. under bush/cheney the country was forced into a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed neither a strategic nor existential threat to us or that cheney justified as if it did. we were on war footing because that was the national mindset that the knneocons and fellow hawks knew they could use to justify everything from torture to war to propaganda manufactured, again, in the vice president s office. the aluminum tubes, remember that? that notes saddam hussein had a mysterious airplane that would deliver nuclear bombs on america? dick cheney sold the notion of an or wellian war as if it were a country somewhere are when much of what he accomplished from putting troops in saudi arabia to an unjustified war in iraq to waterboarding actually created more enemies with pictures for their war posters. obama is working to fix that. in the terrorism threat where it belongs is a serious threat that should keep us on the alert but no
should keep us on the alert but not squash individual freedom or international debate. david kon for mother jones magazine, a democratic congressman for pennsylvania, and the first iraq war veteran to serve in the united states congress. both are msnbc contributors. well, let s take a look, gentlemen, at what president obama said yesterday. let s take a look at this part where he rejects the war on terrori terrorism. neither i nor any president can promise the total defeat of terror. we will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings nor stamp out every danger to our open society, but what we can do, what we must do, is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold. all the while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. and to define that strategy, we have to make decisions based not
continued as vigilantly as ever. or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. but in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground. and half measures keep you half exposed. the day after president obama told the country osama bin laden had been captured and killed, or actually killed, abc s jonathan karl interviewed cheney. let s listen. reporter: are we safe for now? i think so. but it s a kind of situation where we need to preserve ourselves of vigilance, if you will. we need to stay just as vigilant as we have been. back to david. i mean, this is an important transition from cheneyism to obamaism. obama is fighting the war because we have to fight it because the americans at the