"Osama bin Laden will never walk on this earth again" is the rhetoric we want to represent us?

[frazzled]

18. This rhetoric has been representing Democrats since 9/11

I remember what John Edwards said in his VP nominating speech at the Democratic Convention: "And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you."

Yes, he said (in perfect GW Bush fashion): "we will destroy you." And then most everyone here was rooting for him four years later as the best thing since sliced bread. Kerry repeatedly talked about how we should have gotten bin Laden at Tora Bora, and criticized Bush for not having done so. Now Obama has accomplished what the American people, including prominent Democrats (not me particularly, because I didn't think he had much currency anymore; but what do I know: I don't read the daily intelligence briefings) apparently wanted: retaliation, whether symbolic or otherwise, for the 3,000 deaths that resulted in a flash from an attack on the US.

Agree with it or not, but Obama is not the first Democrat to have said this; he merely carried out what Democrats had been calling for for a decade. So if you're going to put the blame anywhere, don't save it exclusively for Obama. Don't act as if it is some moral failing that he alone has foisted on the country.

And don't act like this is the same as, say, the role the US played in the assassination of Salvador Allende during the Nixon administration. Allende hadn't done anything to us, never attacked us; he was a democratically elected leader of his nation. It was a purely ideological, imperialist move. It's not pretty, but at least, as happens in war, there was a reason bin Laden was attacked.

I don't like this kind of talk either (I have been solidly opposed to the death penalty for many many decades, even for the most heinous criminals): but it's what our party, and the vast majority of the nation, has been saying for years. I think it's too late to be shocked by it now. It's the end of a story. Now a new chapter can begin.