Hastert writes 'Dems think America's biggest threat is... Republicans'

Mike Sheehan
Published: Friday October 27, 2006

Embattled Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), still reeling from press scrutiny over the Foley scandal, has 'blogged' at a conservative website in which he writes that Democrats think the GOP is America's primary threat.

"In short, Democrats do not believe in the Global War on Terror," writes Hastert at the site, Redstate. "I don't mean that they don't support it, though they don't. What I mean is Democrats don't believe the war actually exists."

Hastert continues, "While Republicans believe the biggest threat to American freedom and security is the evil ideology that planned and executed the murder of 3,000 of our countrymen five years ago, and continues planning today, Democrats think the biggest threat to America is... Republicans."

The essay comes shortly before Election Day and appears to be directed to the Republican base and particularly those on the right whose support is wavering in light of the party's myriad troubles this election season. Some critics have accused the GOP of fearmongering as November 7 draws closer.

The blog entry in full can be read here. Further excerpts follow...

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To Republicans, the lessons of 9/11 are clear. We are at war with Islamist extremists and have been since at least as long ago as the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993. More to the point, they are at war with us. The goal of our enemies - global domination through murder, terror, and, at the earliest possible date, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction - was stated long before 19 young men hijacked four planes five Septembers ago. They have no political agenda or list of grievances. Their perversion of a decent religion has left them with no incentive to pursue either peace or progress. They want, quite simply, to terror-bomb us and our values back to the Dark Ages. As far as we are concerned, our enemies present to us a choice not between war and peace but between war and chaos. They will fight us whether we choose to fight back or not. As far as Republicans are concerned we are in a fight for our freedom and even our lives.

The Democrats disagree.

At a fundamental, instinctive level, Democrats think that there must be something we're doing to exacerbate all this; that there must be something they could do that would make Islamist suicide bombers pack up their bomb vests and stop threatening us. If only, they say, Republicans could address the "root causes" of their troubled psychology - if only we could sit down and talk to them -- they wouldn't hate us so much. If only America would abandon its tough-talking, uncompromising stance, we could immediately spark the dawn of a kinder, gentler jihad.

They think, in short, that 9/11 was an aberration, not part of a pattern. This is nothing short of insane.

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