According to the latest
poll,, Bush is back at a 33% approval rating, which is a huge
drag to his party and their chances to get re-elected in both 2006 and 2008. At one time, Bush had a lot of cards in his play-deck that he could use, but more recently, it's come down to one plea: Vote Republican, because the Democrats are weak on security.
This diary is going to show you how, in a few logical steps, we can totally disprove this assertion in a way that even political neophytes can follow.
Let's start with what we know.
* Bush's government was not prepared for a 9/11 type incident. After it happened, Condoleeza Rice claimed that nobody could have anticipated that terrorists would have used planes as weapons, but there are multiple ways to disprove this assertion, as thise website at CommonDreams.com shows. Regardless of whether it could have been prevented, one thing it indisputably did was cause Bush's ratings go through the roof. In fact, if you look back at the past 100 years, every war has caused a huge spike in approval rating for the president (at least to start).
So let's take a look at what happened subsequent to the tragic events of 9/11:
* You would expect one of the primary concerns after an event of 9/11's magnitute would be understanding why it happened so that it could be prevented in the future. However, Bush opposed the creation of a 9/11 commission.
* After finally acquiescing to the creation of the commission, Bush's administration only half-heartedly implemented some of their suggestions.
* Bush's administration cut anti-terrorism funding in New York by 40%, while increasing funding in places like "Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., and Omaha, Neb.".
* Airline security improvements have been an utter failure, and a waste of cash.
* Bush tried to sell security of our ports to the United Arab Emirates.
* After attacking Afghanistan and doing a reasonable job of driving the Taliban away, we left the area and never looked back. In the mean time, the Taliban have re-established themselves and are waging a new insurgency.
* Bush admitted he was "not that concerned" about capturing the world's #1 terrorist leader, Osama bin-Laden.
* Bush's administration say it is okay to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, without trial.
* Our military tortured innocents at Abu Ghraib.
* Our administration practices Extraordinary Rendition which is the practice of sending suspected terrorists to other countries where they can legally be tortured and abused.
* Bush knew Iraq had no ties to terrorism, but he attacked anyway.
* Bush backed and cheerleaded the Israeli incursion into Lebanon.
* Bush's adminstration has been pushing for an attack on Iran.
All of these things point to one of two related conclusions:
1) Bush has not taken our actual security very seriously.
2) Bush is interested in keeping the middle-east (or people who have ties to the middle east) stirred up and angry.
Why? The answer is simple. Bush and the terrorists need each other. The terrorists need Bush to continue to kick the middle-east beehive, because it sends recruits, money, media attention, local sentiment, and other forms of support their way. Bush needs the terrorists to distract from his disasterous policies elsewhere.
Working-class wages are stagnant, the Katrina handling was a disaster, and the Iraq war is a quagmire. Energy prices are at an all-time high, the proposed social security and medicare-D programs are impending disasters, and the US has lost international respect.
Unfortunately, Bush CAN NOT fix our security issues. He knows that if he does, his ratings will drop even further, as people's attention turns to other issues, such as those mentioned above. Consequently, in order to survive politically, he has to keep terrorism on the forefront of everybody's mind, and that effectively means not doing anything about it (except, of course, trying to keep people scared). Terrorism has effectively become the Republican party's life-jacket -- it is the one thing currently keeping them afloat, but they know they can't take it off, because as soon as they do, they'll sink to the bottom of Lake Failure.
Unfortunately, the US public's reaction to terrorist events is sadly paradoxical, and the Republican party knows they can pray off of this weakness. Consider the case of if there were another attack on US soil. What would happen? Bush's rating would improve by 10 points overnight as people looked to him to lead against something that scares them and seems like a more pressing threat than anything else (even if it's a threat that was effectively manufactured by this administration!). However, the more logical reaction would be to conclude that this administration is simply not doing a good job of protecting us and preventing attacks in the first place, and replace them with an administration that can and will!
When you hear Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) claim that Democratic candidates do not take security seriously, it's a sham -- because the Republicans record easily proves that they have no credibility on the issue (see bullet points above)! It is this kind of project-your-own-weaknesses-on-your-opponent thinking that people need to learn to see through, and they need to realize that Bush actually needs the terrorists as much as they need him.