For Those Who Care About Context

The Strib's Eric Black dissects Michele Bachmann's latest ad, which grills Patty Wetterling and her supporters' takes on defense.

There's some interesting fact-checking - which misses Bachmann's overarching, valid point; Wetterling is supported by people and groups who support cutting and running in Iraq; she also is running as a member of a party whose goal is to cut and run.

Black notes what he considers the "most misleading" part of the ad:

Wetterling says she does not advocate cutting military spending and is committed to giving the U.S. military what it needs to win the war against terrorism. The Bachmann campaign did not produce anything to document a suggestion that Wetterling favors military spending cuts.

The ad then says that “one of this group’s leaders even said we should negotiate with the Taliban.” Again, the picture shows Wetterling, while the on screen words read: “PeacePac Leader Said Negotiate with Taliban.”

This is the key moment in the ad, and the most misleading.

Harvard Professor Roger Fisher is a member of the 30-member board of Livable World. He is also an expert on negotiation and conciliation in international affairs.

On Oct. 5, 2001, Fisher wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe titled “Getting to Yes with the Taliban.” I cannot find it online for linkable purposes...Fisher wrote that if the United States really wanted the Taliban to comply, it would be useful to establish high-level but unofficial contacts so that the United States could signal more precisely what the Taliban needed to do to avoid war.

Black follows:

Eric Zaetsch [a desperately logorrheac writer at an anti-Bachmann stalker site] has noted that after a recent trip to Afghanistan, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist concluded that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily, that “people who call themselves Taliban” should be brought into the Afghan government.

“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished, we’ll be successful.”

Bachmann should not be assumed to agree with this view, just because the Senate majority leader of her party has said it.

Speaking for Bachmann, Parrish said she believes Frist is also wrong. He added that Frist has not contributed to the Bachmann campaign.

Several good points there; Frist exerts no control over Bachmann's agenda, whereas Wetterling's contributors, at least indirectly, do. Frist's view is not even especially popular among Republicans, while cutting and running (or "cutting and jogging, nudge nudge, wink wink") is all but officially the Democrat policy.

But if it was radical for Fisher to write his piece before the U.S. was at war with the Taliban, what is it for Frist to advocate bringing the Taliban into the Afghan government when Taliban fighters are actively trying to kill U.S. and NATO troops?

Odd that Eric Black, so concerned with context when dissecting Bachmann's ad, so completely ignores it now.

In October of 2001, the World Trade Center was still burning. Bodies still lay beneath the rubble. Fighter jets still flew combat air patrol over our cities, including the Twin Cities. The Taliban - with tanks, an air force, an international diplomatic presence of sorts - were in scarcely-disputed control of Afghanistan, nestled in a nation that had defied a thousand years' worth of invaders. Our troops were on their way overseas - we knew this. To negotiate with the Taliban at that time would have been like sending out feelers to Hitler as the D-Day fleet snaked across the channel.

Today, the Taliban is a miserable little rump bandit group that controls a region of mountains known only for exporting heroin and filth. They can never contest control of the nation; controlling a wilderness, however brutally, still leaves them in control of poppies and filth. Negotiating with them today would be...well, wrong. I disagree with Frist, too. But there's some logic to the proposal, and it can't be rejectd out of hand. Negotiating today would provide the possibility of delivering a coup de grace peacefully rather than at the point of a bayonet. Maybe. Negotiating with terrorists is famously dicey.

Negotiating with them in October of 2001 would have profaned, spat upon, the barely-cold and still largely-unidentified dead. It would have abrogated this nation's primary responsibility as a government - protecting our borders and interests.

We see the difference, right? And by "we", I don't mean the logically-vacant zealot Zaetsch, but the smart people, like Eric Black.

The point being that Bachmann's ad, in the great scheme of things, even allowing for Black's criticisms, is accurate. Wetterling's denials, judging by those she associates with, takes funding from, and whose initials, "DFL", she puts after her name, are - to paraphrase another journalist - accurate but fake.

Posted by Mitch at October 20, 2006 07:16 AM | TrackBack