Gentlemen: To the Strawman Construction Mobile!

Patterico uses the thwarted terror attacks in London as a basis for rejecting the claim made by various visions in his head that “This whole war on terror thing is a phony construct made up by Bush.” Various other Bush apologists see this as a vindication for Bush’s strategy, the most important component of which seems to be subsuming all aspects of fighting terrorism under the rubric of “war.” But wait:

A police official in London called it a plan for “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.”

In a briefing at Scotland Yard, the police said they had arrested 21 people in connection with the plot. In response, some flights into London’s Heathrow Airport were canceled. Airlines banned all carry-on luggage on planes leaving Heathrow, causing chaos and long delays during one of the busiest weeks for summer trans-Atlantic travel.

So, let’s summarize the competing strategies here:

• Liberals: While, as in Afghanistan, conventional military force may sometimes by appropriate, other tools–including ordinary police work–will be crucial to thwarting terrorism, while invading secular dictatorships and replacing them with theocratic quasi-states is not merely useless but counterproductive.
• Conservatives: No, no, no, everything has to be seen under the “war paradigm.” Anybody who believes that dainty “police work” can do anything to stop terrorism is an objectively pro-Islamofascist pussy. Only people from Mars understand the jihadist threat, which can be effectively countered only via military force.

What’s amazing is that in light of a serious terrorist plot being thwarted by effective police work, various conservatives are accusing liberals of having their heads in the sand and not taking the war on terror seriously. Because everyone knows that you prove that by devoting an immense amount of resources of invading countries that had virtually nothing to do with Al-Qaeda! I can’t argue with that logic. Personally, I blame the emboldening of the terrorists in the wake of the defeat of Joe Lieberman!

…and I think we can also kiss the winguts’ beloved flypaper theory goodbye.

…of course, to get really stupid you have to wait until Roger L. Simon shows up:

No one looks dopier today than the collection of self-righteous fuddy-duddies who voted for Ned Lamont in Tuesday’s Democratic Primary in Connecticut. In the darkness of his soul Lamont himself must be wondering how to react to the news that another ten jets filled with innocent human beings were about to explode over the Atlantic. Not good for his campaign. It reminds me of the old LA Weekly cartoon: “Nuclear War? There goes my career!”

The problem with Lamont and his ilk is that they are unable to wrap their minds around the fact that Islamic Fascsim is a deeply real and pervasive phenomenon with hundreds of millions of adherents and fellow travelers.

Yes, if anything looks stupid today, it’s the idea that we should be focusing on a variety of techniques to stop terrorism rather than randomly invading countries with virtually no connection to anti-American terrorism! It’s as plain as the fact that Scenes From A Mall is an enduring masterpiece!