Classic. The facts don’t mesh with our theory, <$NoAd$>so let’s get new facts.
Last night Richard Perle was on Chris Matthews Hardball show and Matthews pressed him on the results of the new Pew poll which appears to show a rising tide of anti-Americanism in Arab states that are at least nominally allied with the United States. Most daunting, the public in those states is apparently increasingly supportive of suicide bombings.
Here’s the exchange …
PERLE: It is appalling and it is very dangerous. It shows you what happens when you allow suicide bombing to go largely unresponded to for as long as we did.
We had a decade in which we were attacked again and again and we didn’t respond. And, eventually, these thing become entrenched and even fashionable.
MATTHEWS: But you said last year, in 2001, right after 9/11, that if we go in, the idea that it is going to damage us in the Arab world is nonsense. You think that our going into Iraq has not stimulated a higher level of hostility to us that would support this kind of horrible attitude toward our deaths?
PERLE: Because the Arab world was on Saddam’s side? What is the logic of that? That they object to the fact that we’ve liberated 25 million Iraqis?
In other words, the facts don’t make sense to me so they’re not facts.
If this were just spin to snow Matthews and other barkers it would be one thing. But it’s the essence of how these folks think, how they deceive themselves when they’re not busy deceiving others.
