Roger on Terrorism and the election

Dear Ed,

I imagine that you, like me, have this terrible fear hiding in the background of your mind. A fear, so to speak, of the unknown ... or, rather, a mix of the unknown with the all-too-well-understood.

What we all understand is that another terrorist attack in the United States is almost certainly the wish and goal of multiple parties out there.

What we all understand is that the timing of this event (or these events) is up to those individuals. Some may well be operating at the direction of foreign terrorist leaders, but many could be flying solo at this time: lone individuals or small cells planted deeply, or simply inspired by the calls for attacks on the U.S.

What only a few of us seem to understand is that the threat isn't just from Al Queda or other Islamic extremists. Oklahoma City was the product of pure born-in-the-USA extremism, and the people who applauded that horrible event are still out there and would like to see more.

In today's environment, such domestic terrorists have a new advantage. Pop off a bomb somewhere -- blow up a federal building, level a shopping mall, annihilate a stadium full of baseball fans -- and you know that the media, the government, and most citizens will immediately assume that Bin Laden is behind it. I wonder how much investigative time will be wasted, and errors spun, because of such assumptions.

In any case, you and I know that a terrorist attack could come at any time. Domestically produced or not, it's likely to be blamed on Islamic radicals ... and if it happens only shortly before the election, there will be little hope of sorting it out in time for people to weigh all of that as they vote.

And here's where our fear of the unknown comes in. We don't know IF such an attack will happen before the election. We don't know if it will be a dud, or prove horribly powerful and effective. We don't know who the target will be, although in a sense that hardly matters. Any event any where is likely to quickly move "terrorism" up past the economy as the #1 concern the public.

And we don't really know what the consequences, politically, will be. Based on experiences to date and public opinion polls, Bush is likely to get a boost (for reasons that defy rational understanding, leastways on my part).

Finally, here's another fear -- something that, perhaps, you and I and others have just tried not to think about because it seems impossible for us to change in any way anyhow: the sense that Democrats, including Kerry and Edwards, are just doing no more than hoping for the best. We can't know if a terrorist attack is coming tomorrow or next week or next month, and we can't do anything about it, and the results will be the results regardless, so a lot of Democrats and liberals are just gritting our teeth and hoping that either it doesn't happen, or if it does it's minor, or if it isn't minor that we can ride it out anyhow.

Well ... I've been fighting that impulse in myself. I've been giving it all some thought. Not that I've come up with anything brilliant (perhaps not anything useful at all, in fact), but it occurs to me that Kerry-Edwards could perhaps be "inoculating" themselves by speaking out about the possibility of an attack happening at any time. Even running some ads on the matter. Giving special interviews specifically focusing on it. These would, always, discuss what the Democrats will do differently once we've retaken the White House. But they would also sound like warnings to people, "Hey, don't forget that terrorists ARE out there, and an attack at any time IS possible."

Like any kind of insurance, there is an upfront cost to that. In this case, the cost of reminding people about an issue that -- again, inexplicably -- Bush leads on. The "payoff" would occur only if there IS a terrorist attack before the election, and (perhaps too much like regular commercial insurance), there wouldn't even be any certainty that it would have a decent payoff. But the alternative is to keep "hoping for the best," which strikes me as a terrible policy.

Two other thoughts about this, though. In "inoculating" themselves, our candidates could in the process make sure they're inflicting some damage on the Bush Campaign. For example, since Bush and him minions decided to toss over tradition by engaging in political attacks during the Democratic Convention, Kerry / Edward should return the favor, finding ways to upstage the Republicans or to set the terms of the debate contrary to whatever the GOP has planned for its convention days. Put them on the defensive at the very moment they're supposed to be projecting their positive, "unifying" themes that promote Bush more than attack Kerry.

And -- my second thought here -- maybe there's no better way to do this than by highlighting the Bush Administration's gross failures on the war against terrorism. Now we have Plamegate II, the exposure of a double-agent we had with Al Queda. This is potentially a huge issue, and there may be ways to make sure it's getting LOTS of media coverage just about the time the GOP convention opens in a few weeks. (Yeah, it's already out there, but then the Valerie Plame matter has risen and fallen repeatedly, and lasted a good long time on one of those cycles). What better inoculation that to point-blank say, "If there's an attack now, the exposure of a major asset we had within Al Queda itself may be the reason why!" You'd have to know a LOT more about the whole thing before you could do that. I remain astonished that Condi Rice seemingly, almost casually, admitted that the Administration disclosed the agent's identity; it makes me think there's more to it than we've heard so far. But if it really is just as it appears -- that by plan or via incompetence they exposed an asset's identity for no better reason than to make themselves look good briefly -- it seems to me entirely fair ground for Kerry / Edwards to cover.

Such are my thoughts this Sunday night. If there be any merit in the above, please consider all or part for the blog.

Best,
Roger

I have a few thoughts to add to what Roger wrote.

In case anyone reading this isn't already aware of it, David Neiwert on Orcinus has done prize-winning yeoman's work on tracking and dealing with the ramifications of domestic terrorism, including the government's apparent refusal to take it as seriously as foreign terrorism. (His latest book is Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, A Trial, and Hate Crime in America.) A trip to Orcinus should be part of everyone's regular blogrun schedule.

A far as Bush getting a boost from a terrorist attack before the election, I think that could go either way. Certainly, there would be an impulse to rally 'round the flag and support our government and leaders, but, after all, we're shortly about to finish out the third year after 9/11, which I think most people would feel is sufficient time for the Bush administration to have made us a at least a little safer than we were back then. Absolutely, no government anywhere, at any time, run by anyone, can protect its citizens 100% from terrorist attack, but when a government has fought tooth and nail the very changes that could help, and has undertaken such a risky and counterproductive foreign policy as the Iraq war, and still continues to ignore serious problems and refuses to release promised funds, I think all of that is going to add up to people taking a terrorist attack as an abject failure on the part of Bush, and they will act (and vote) accordingly.

But even given my expectation that another attack would hurt, and not help, Bush's campaign for election, I think Roger's idea for Kerry to get out front on this issue is a good one, and right in line with what many of us have been saying all along, that national security is the important issue of this election. That's one primary reason why Kerry, the decorated Vietnam vet, is the candidate in the first place, and, judging by the focus of the Democratic convention on the military record and bona fides of the candidate, Kerry knows that as well.