Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Something in White house Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s briefing today bothered me:

The President is fully committed to doing everything within his power to prevent attacks and defeat the terrorists.

Sounds terrific, but in the next breath, McClellan declares, “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” So, negotiating with the enemy is not within his power. What does doing everything mean? Doing everything means everything, not just things you feel like doing. A heroic leader does not have such limited bandwidth, he has inventive imagination and comes up with great solutions.

In reading the full text of Osama Bin Laden’s recent statement, I have mixed feelings of hope and guilt. The hope is in that he is offering insights and peaceful solutions, perhaps an end to a great divide filled with corpses of war. The guilt is with the tone in the USA, that good Americans aren’t supposed to agree with Bin Laden. There are many average Joe Americans whose knee-jerk reaction will be to curse and dismiss Bin Laden’s statements.

Authors of post Sept. 11 books listed here earlier, Education In Terrorism, foresaw the statesman role Bin Laden seeks to play. They made many of the same observations as Bin Laden, such as warning the US against depleting itself in Iraq and Aghanistan in the same way that the former USSR did in Aghanistan in the 1980’s.

Bin Laden recommends reading the book, Rogue State and accurately quotes many current events. The book’s publisher is Common Courage Press. The author, William Blum’s web site is killinghope.org.
I would be pleased to provide a link to recommended reading by President Bush, but as far as I know he hasn’t come up with anything lately. Perhaps he defers to Oprah’s Book Club List?