Shrub on "Root Causes"
May 27, 2007
This post is by Steve Benen and originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report.
OK, just one more post about startling comments from Bush’s press conference yesterday (I warned you it was a gold mine).
A reporter asked a basic and important question. Noting that Joe Biden called al Qaeda in Iraq a “Bush-fulfilling prophecy,†the reporter asked the president why he doesn’t just “get out of the middle of a civil war and fight al Qaeda.†Bush, of course, reflexively dodged the substance of the question, but his response was interesting anyway.
OK, just one more post about startling comments from Bush’s press conference yesterday (I warned you it was a gold mine).
A reporter asked a basic and important question. Noting that Joe Biden called al Qaeda in Iraq a “Bush-fulfilling prophecy,†the reporter asked the president why he doesn’t just “get out of the middle of a civil war and fight al Qaeda.†Bush, of course, reflexively dodged the substance of the question, but his response was interesting anyway.
“The Middle East looked nice and cozy for awhile. Everything looked fine on the surface, but beneath the surface, there was a lot of resentment, there was a lot of frustration, such that 19 kids got on airplanes and killed 3,000 Americans. It’s in the long-term interest of this country to address the root causes of these extremists and radicals exploiting people that cause them to kill themselves and kill Americans and others.
