From day one, Team Bush saw terrorist threat as a political opportunity to be exploited, not as a problem to be solved
Thaddeus Stevens
against terrorist attacks. Now we learn that terrorism experts have known about the threat of
liquid explosives for years, but that the Bush administration did nothing about that threat
until now, and tried to divert funds from programs that might have helped protect us.
Hoping for Fear By Paul Krugman
The New York Times Published: August 14, 2006
Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol
Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for
corporations and the wealthy. I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that
"politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan
agenda are not true patriots."
The response from readers was furious — fury not at the politicians but at me, for suggesting
that such an outrage was even possible. "How can I say that to my young son?" demanded one
angry correspondent.
I wonder what he says to his son these days.
We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress
saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be
exploited. The story of the latest terror plot makes the administration's fecklessness and
cynicism on terrorism clearer than ever.
Fecklessness: the administration has always pinched pennies when it comes to actually
defending America against terrorist attacks. Now we learn that terrorism experts have known
about the threat of liquid explosives for years, but that the Bush administration did nothing
about that threat until now, and tried to divert funds from programs that might have helped
protect us. "As the British terror plot was unfolding," reports The Associated Press, "the
Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this
year developing new explosives detection technology."
Cynicism: Republicans have consistently portrayed their opponents as weak on terrorism, if not
actually in sympathy with the terrorists. Remember the 2002 TV ad in which Senator Max Cleland
of Georgia was pictured with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? Now we have Dick Cheney
suggesting that voters in the Democratic primary in Connecticut were lending aid and comfort
to "Al Qaeda types." There they go again.
More fecklessness, and maybe more cynicism, too: NBC reports that there was a dispute between
the British and the Americans over when to make arrests in the latest plot. Since the alleged
plotters weren't ready to go — they hadn't purchased airline tickets, and some didn't even
have passports yet — British officials wanted to watch and wait, hoping to gather more
evidence. But according to NBC, the Americans insisted on early arrests.
Suspicions that the Bush administration might have had political motives in wanting the
arrests made prematurely are fed by memories of events two years ago: the Department of
Homeland Security declared a terror alert just after the Democratic National Convention,
shifting the spotlight away from John Kerry — and, according to Pakistani intelligence
officials, blowing the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda.
But whether or not there was something fishy about the timing of the latest terror
announcement, there's the question of whether the administration's scare tactics will work. If
current polls are any indication, Republicans are on the verge of losing control of at least
one house of Congress. And "on every issue other than terrorism and homeland security," says
Newsweek about its latest poll, "the Dems win." Can a last-minute effort to make a big splash
on terror stave off electoral disaster?
Many political analysts think it will. But even on terrorism, and even after the latest news,
polls give Republicans at best a slight advantage. And Democrats are finally doing what they
should have done long ago: calling foul on the administration's attempt to take partisan
advantage of the terrorist threat.
It was significant both that President Bush felt obliged to defend himself against that
accusation in his Saturday radio address, and that his standard defense — attacking a straw
man by declaring that "there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face" — came off
sounding so weak.
Above all, many Americans now understand the extent to which Mr. Bush abused the trust the
nation placed in him after 9/11. Americans no longer believe that he is someone who will keep
them safe, as many did even in 2004; the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina and the
disaster in Iraq have seen to that.
All Mr. Bush and his party can do at this point is demonize their opposition. And my guess is
that the public won't go for it, that Americans are fed up with leadership that has nothing to
hope for but fear itself.
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose that was political, or
at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent was the implication that
followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything that entered into war —
social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of operations, the use of
violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or at least accord with it.
Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and function in what in some respects
was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow them to carry on their bloody
work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political employer back into the equation.
Just as war and its institutions reflected their social environment, so every aspect of
fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether this impulse was intense or
moderate. The appropriate relationship between politics and war occupied Clausewitz throughout
his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and letters show his awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract — can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be overlooked, are illustrated
by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a strategic problem set by the chief of
the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of the opposing sides was spelled
out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To a friend who had sent him the problem
for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not possible to draft a sensible plan of
operations without indicating the political condition of the states involved, and their
relationship to each other: ‘War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of
politics by different means. Consequently, the main lines of every major strategic plan are
largely political in nature, and their political character increases the more the plan
applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war plan results directly from the
political conditions of the two warring states, as well as from their relations to third
powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan, and frequently - if there is only one
theater of operations - may even be identical with it. But the political element even enters
the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it be without influence on such major
episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to this point of view, there can be no
question of a purely military evaluation of a great strategic issue, nor of a purely military
scheme to solve it.’
- quotes from a letter by Carl von Clausewitz to his friend C. v. Roeder
Excerpted from Peter Paret's introduction to Carl von Clausewitz' "On War"
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"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more
susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ...
They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their
insecurities." ~ George Gerbner ~ Annenberg School for Communication
--- In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to
Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against
Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not
happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the
Government of Oceania itself, "Just to keep the People frightened."
-- George Orwell, 1984, 127
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"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening.They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both
moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
~ Frederick Douglass, 1857
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