Thursday, September 07, 2006
Milking of 9/11 - The Fear Factor
The cash cow has become a sick cow but those who exploited the national tragedy are not going to let it rest. Michael Abramowitz and Charles Babington in the Post: "With a series of forceful speeches on terrorism and a dramatic announcement that he has sent top-tier terrorism suspects to the Guantanamo Bay prison, President Bush this week has demonstrated anew the power of even a weakened commander in chief to set the terms of national debate.
All week, the White House has made plain its desire to refocus the attention of voters this fall away from a troubled and unpopular war in Iraq in favor of Bush's vision of a worldwide struggle against Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Yesterday, Bush sought to turn a legal defeat at the Supreme Court into a political opportunity."
By challenging Congress to immediately give the administration authority to try notorious al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed by military commissions, he shifted the argument with Democratic critics of national security policies and competence. As Bush framed the choice, anyone against his proposal would be denying him necessary tools to protect American security. His success in catching much of Washington by surprise showed that a president who polls show has his political back to the wall still has formidable tools: the ability to make well-timed course corrections on policy, dominate the news and shape the capital's agenda in the weeks before Election Day. |
On the other side of the Atlantic, Clive James comments in The Guardian about the midterm elections: "For two years straight, from the invasion of Iraq to the ceremonial handover of power to the Iraqis, the Republican administration got away with linking the Iraq war with the wider war on terror. Anyone who questioned US involvement in Iraq could not be trusted to keep the country safe. But that argument has swayed fewer and fewer Americans, as they've seen Iraq fall into chaos and the civilian and military death toll climb."
Republicans are pinning their hopes on the one bright spot in the polls for them that gives the president high marks for handling the war on terrorism. Voters credit the President for the absence of a terrorist attack on US soil, since September 11 2001. But even this "natural" advantage could be turned against Republicans. In the words of the White House's latest strategy issued this month for combating terrorism, "terrorist networks today are more dispersed and less centralised. They are more reliant on smaller cells inspired by a common ideology and less directed by a central command structure. In other words, instead of a small concentrated number of miscreants, our enemies have multiplied, become more radicalised and splintered, so that they are harder to track down. The question Democrats should frame is: Are we really safer with Republicans in charge? |
