Terrorism as a Spectator Sport

With the approach of Super Bowl Sunday, talking heads are out on TV to handicap and cash in politically on the biggest game of all--a terror attack on American soil.

The latest skirmish pits Sen. Kit Bond, ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, against White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who took exception to Bond's flogging the notion that release of information that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is cooperating with questioners "has no doubt been helpful” to his “terrorist cohorts around the world.”

The White House is underscoring Bond's desperation to find political profit in the terror threat, at first objecting to "Mirandizing" the would-be Christmas bomber from providing leads and then switching to criticism of news that he is doing so, a fact that Gibbs points out was revealed at the Senate Intelligence Committee's public hearing earlier this week.

This squabbling reflects the ugly undertone of using primal fears as just another political weapon to tear down the President as "tone-deaf" to terrorism, reducing the most complicated issue of national security to a counterpart of the nonsense of claims that he wants "a government takeover" of health care.

Gibbs says that Bond "owes an apology to the professionals in the law enforcement community and those that work in this building, not for Democrats and Republicans, but who work each and every day to keep the American people safe and would never ever, ever knowingly release or unknowingly release classified information that could endanger an operation or an interrogation."

That apology should go further and include Americans of all political persuasions who understand the complexity of terrorism and don't want to see tinhorn politicians playing games with their deepest fears.

Update: Putting it another way, Peggy Noonan warns: "Both our political parties continue, even though they know they shouldn't, even though they're each composed of individuals many of whom actually know what time it is, even though they know we are in an extraordinary if extended moment, an ongoing calamity connected to our economic future, our nation's standing in the world, our strength and our safety—-even though they know all this, they continue to go through the daily motions...Our political professionals cheapen everything they touch because they are burying themselves in daily urgencies in order to dodge and avoid the big picture."

Hug a Terrorist for the Holidays

That photo of the Vice-President with his arms around a couple of grinning White House gate-crashers last night will do nicely as a symbol for Americans as they count their blessings, real and imagined, on this day.

While so many are getting their meals at homeless shelters, the headlines are devoted to the reality-show aspirants who breached the most secure location in the nation, decked out in finery and hair-styling that could have paid for hundreds of Thanksgiving dinners.

Economic absurdity aside, how are we to take the President's speech next week telling how much more American blood and treasure will be spent in Afghanistan to guarantee our domestic safety when two unauthorized strangers can walk into his own house undeterred and have Joe Biden give them a hug?

Loathsome as they are, Tareq and Michaele Salahi may have done Americans a favor by dramatizing in tabloid terms just how illusory the idea of homeland security may be in an age when there are not enough eyes to watch every rathole in every location, high and low.

If the terrorists show up in evening wear next time, who will stop them?

Update: The uninvited guests were allowed to enter, says a Secret Service spokesman, because "our procedure wasn't followed" at one security checkpoint, an explanation that rivals the explanation of Gen. Buck Turgidson in the movie, "Dr. Strangelove," about the failure to stop American and Soviet bombers heading for a doomsday confrontation, "I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

If the Salahis had been terrorists carrying vials of anthrax, the Secret Service might today be setting up new checkpoints to protect President Nancy Pelosi or Robert Byrd from the next wave of "Desperate Housewives" wannabes.

Fear of the Year

Gays, pro-choicers and the liberal elite can relax. The Republicans have found their domestic target for '08 and, from all indications in New Hampshire, it is now illegal immigrants who are threatening the very fabric of American society.

"It's becoming a litmus test of how conservative you are," according to a professor of political science quoted by the McClatchy newspapers. "Absolutely an important issue," confirms the director of the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll.

Following the Karl Rove playbook, GOP contenders are reaching a consensus on this election's objects of fear and loathing for their Base. Rudy Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, has the franchise on external threats--terrorists and, coming up strong on the outside rail, Iran.

But fear-mongering the domestic dangers is up for grabs. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson want to withhold federal money from cities and states that don't report illegal aliens, toughen border security and speed up the process of deporting them. Duncan Hunter wants to double the fence to keep them out, and Tom Tancredo may soon up the ante with a proposal to nuke them.

Only John McCain, who made the mistake of straight talk on the issue, is not benefiting from the wave of Lou Dobbsian outrage over the threat from people who mow America's lawns and wash dishes in restaurants.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of such strangers?

Burritos and Botox Beat Sex

Hard to tell what cultural studies scholars will make of all this, but American web users are less interested in sex than their counterparts in Egypt, India and Turkey.

But our Internet searchers lead the world in curiosity about burritos and Iraq, and are second only to Australians in asking about botox and car bombs, according to Google data since 2004.

The Irish want to know about hangovers and Kate Moss, Italians are inquisitive about Viagra while people in Pakistan are understandably concerned about terrorism and the Taliban.

So in the long run, the average American is a lover of Mexican food who wants to erase frown lines caused by worries over the violence in the Middle East. Short term, if you check quickly, the preoccupation is with fires destroying castles in Malibu.

Hillary's Heads-Up on Terror

With a commanding lead for the Democratic nomination, candidate Clinton is looking ahead for land mines on her road to the White House next fall.

That would explain her out-of-the-blue comment in New Hampshire today about how a terrorist attack would boost Republican chances. She has good reason to worry.

If one 9/11 made it possible for Bush to take us into the wrong war and start chipping away at our civil liberties, what could another do? Even without one, Rudy Giuliani is playing strong man to lead the Republican field, and Fred Thompson will be along any day now to offer his country vanilla version of incipient Fascism.

Sen. Clinton’s attempt to preempt that won’t help much.

"It's a horrible prospect,” she said, “to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."

Not a comforting thought for the start of a late-summer weekend, but that’s the world we live in now.

Protected Sex for First Responders

Talk about multi-tasking! A London police officer has been acquitted of improper behavior for having sex with a stranger while on duty because he was wearing his earpiece at the time.

The incident was prompted by the officer’s response to a patriotic web site, Uniform Dating, which matches “those working in professions such as the armed forces, police, law enforcement, health, medical, ambulance, prison, corrections and fire fighters, for friendship, love and romance."

"If there was a call for me I would have answered it and dealt with it,” he told the jury, which took only ten minutes to render its verdict.

In the face of terrorist plots, the British seem reassured to know their first responders are always at the ready.

Thompson's Reagan Act: Timing is Off

If Fred Thompson’s slow-motion entrance onto the ’08 scene was meant to create suspense and/or keep him out of the political crossfire, it isn’t working out too well.

The suspense is long gone, and the anticipation is beginning to look like impatience as negative stories about his past, his changing staff, his lagging fund-raising and his wife’s undue influence just keeping coming.

Whether spontaneous or spurred by rival candidates, reports about Thompson’s lobbying career are beginning to chip away at the actor-Senator’s down-home can-do resume.

After the revelation that he worked briefly for a pro-abortion group comes the story now of his hefty earnings and campaign contributions from two corporations for pushing what turned out to be a taxpayer-financed $1.7 billion “hole in the ground” for a proposed nuclear breeder reactor in Tennessee.

The Presidential image is being tarnished by what looks like greedy opportunism.

While Giuliani and Romney keep dueling over who can save us from terrorists and illegal immigrants, the competence issue is beginning to bypass Thompson and, when he finally steps out to do his Reagan impersonation, it may be too little and too late.

Is Bush Making Absolutists of Us All?

If truth is the first casualty of war, public reason may be the second. In the world this President has created, with the help of terrorists who want to take away our peace of mind, every issue has been infected by their good-or-evil view of the world.

In reporting the Senate debate on wiretapping authority last night, the New York Times cites a White House “victory” over a measure that would temporarily allow more latitude to eavesdrop on foreign communications by suspected terrorists.

The ACLU says “Democrats caved in to the politics of fear,” while the Republican sponsor crows “I can sleep a little safer tonight.”

All this hyperbole is prompted by what in a saner society would be a serious discussion about resolving the conflict between public safety and individual rights.

The vocal defenders of privacy are doing their cause, our cause, no service by reducing every complicated question to right or wrong, black or white, us or them. Bush, Cheney and their ilk may be deaf to arguments on these issues, but shouting louder won’t get through to them.

The questions will still be there after they are gone, and the voices of reason will be needed as much as ever.

By all means, let’s set severe limits on what this paranoid gang can do, but not get pushed into defending doing nothing. If politics no longer ends at the water’s edge, neither should good sense.

Will Terrorists Pick Our Next President?

In the terrorism-expert business, there is no profit in forecasting there won’t be an attack on the Homeland “soon.” No one will remember a negative and give you credit, and, on the other hand, the definition of “soon” is expandable.

So it’s no surprise that not only do the N.I.E. researchers, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and other less sensitive-gutted authorities on the government payroll but the all rented experts on TV agree about the imminence of an attack in this country. Where’s the news in not predicting one?

The more interesting question is what the terrorists may be thinking. Assuming a modicum of brains to go with their mad hatred, if the object is to sow fear and confusion in our society, what political outcome in ’08 best suits their purposes? And what could they do to help bring it about?

Since 9/11, George W. Bush has been collaborating with Osama bin Laden in destroying the traditional trust Americans have had in their government and in one another. Would Al Qaeda like more of the same?

If so, Giuliani is their man. His campaign, based on images of Rudy in the rubble, is following Karl Rove’s game plan for 2004. Any attack that rekindles 9/11 fears would help America’s Mayor get to the White House.

But if terrorists prefer, for whatever reasons, to see Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office, holding off on homeland attacks would help. It may all depend on their reaction to the Republican gas bags. If they take them at all seriously, Al Qaeda leaders might prefer a Democratic President who wouldn’t break American laws to get at them.

On the other hand, if they find hard-line campaign rhetoric laughable, another Republican to extend Bush’s incompetence and impotence to hurt them might just be the ticket for bin Laden et al.

The terrorists no doubt will go about their business their own way for their own reasons, but what they do in the next year will nonetheless have a profound effect on our elections.

That may be the saddest commentary of all on our post-9/11 world.

John Edwards' Terror Plan

The script for this writes itself: Critics on the right will call it “the hug-a-terrorist strategy.” Idealists on the left will applaud Edwards for striking at the “root causes” of terrorism.

Both will miss the point, just as the former Senator’s proposal for 10,000 volunteers to help people in underdeveloped countries misses the point about terrorism.

His re-treaded Peace Corps solution recalls the old Yiddish joke about the bystander who keeps yelling at those treating a heart-attack victim to give him an enema. When an exasperated doctor asks how an enema would help a dying man, the answer is “It couldn’t hoit.”

Investing in poverty-stricken areas “couldn’t hoit,” but it won’t make a dent, as Edwards hopes, in persuading millions of people “sitting on the fence” to become our friends instead of terrorist enemies.

This morning, I received an e-mail from Kiva about the status of my micro-loans to small-business owners in Togo, Ecuador, Samoa and the Ukraine. Reaching out to help others is an American tradition but, as a solution to terrorism, it’s a band-aid on a gaping wound.

Bush’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told a conference on Asian security last weekend, "One of the disturbing things about many of the terrorists... is that these are not ignorant, poor people. These are educated people, often from professional families. So dealing with poverty and those issues is not going to eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce the pool of people prepared to give their lives for this cause."

So all cynicism about political motives aside, give
Edwards an “A” for altruism but a “C” for coherence.

Gates Swinging Both Ways on Iraq

The man who replaced the unlamented Donald (Often-Wrong-But-Never-in-Doubt) Rumsfeld has seemed, by comparison, reasonable and realistic. Who wouldn’t? But the current Secretary of Defense’s ambivalence about Iraq is showing.

Commemorating the June 7, 1944 landings in Normandy, Gates said today, “We once again face enemies seeking to destroy our way of life, and we are once again engaged in an ideological struggle that may not find resolution for many years or even decades. Just (as) during World War II, free nations of the world are banding together--and dying together--to confront their common threat.”

Very Bush-Cheney, down to the basic untruths: Nations are not “banding together” but bailing out of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, and “the enemies seeking to destroy our way of life” are a collection of unpredictable fanatics rather than the organized armies we faced in World War II.

Gates knows better. Last weekend, he told a conference on Asian security that “we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation."

In Iraq, Gates is not talking about “many years or even decades” to the parliament, setting late summer as a deadline for getting their act together if they expect us to extend the Surge.

His double-edged (or if you will, two-faced) talk may reflect, at long last, some unwelcome reality seeping into the White House. One thing is sure: If he were still running the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld would be railing against such defeatist talk.

Safer Since 9/11? Wrong Question

It came up in the debate on Sunday and hasn’t gone away. The fact that the question is unanswerable is no impediment to Democratic candidates making it a campaign issue that will eventually hurt them all and help Republicans who have fewer scruples about using fear as a political weapon.

Hillary Clinton made the mistake of saying, “I believe we are safer than we were” to John Edwards’ bumper-sticker assertion that “the war on terror is a bumper-sticker slogan.”

Now the Clinton, Edwards and Obama campaigns are issuing position papers to one-up one another on a question the answer to which we have no way of knowing.

Safer how? There have been no domestic attacks since 9/11, but the various plots that have been publicized as thwarted have a whiff of self-serving inflation to them. (If this dire subject has any laughs in it, Nora Ephron found them the other day on the Huffington Post.)

After the alleged scheme to blow up fuel lines at JFK airport last week, Mayor Mike Bloomberg urged New Yorkers to relax. “You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist," he said. But then Bloomberg isn’t running for President--yet.

What we do know is that most of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations have not been implemented, and books like Stephen Flynn’s “The Edge of Disaster” have been sounding the alarm about what can reasonably be done to make us safer. But how much safer is unknowable. The hard truth is that we have to live with an anxiety that did not exist before 9/11.

Taking political cheap shots on our very survival is the height of venality. If the candidates have specific workable proposals to enhance our safety, let’s hear them. Otherwise stop saying “Boo” to American voters. George Bush has been doing that for too long.