Wisconsin is a swing state, one of the 20 or so states that will decide the upcoming election. As a result, at a Kerry rally up north a few Bush supporters turned out to hear what Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. had to say. One supporter President Bush liked what he heard, but nevertheless asked, \Still, I wonder who Osama bin Laden would want for president?""
This is an important question. Republicans have kept their campaign focused on national security because they know Kerry is stronger on domestic issues. Job loss, a flagging economy and the morass that is modern American health care have all suffered under Bush. As a result, Bush must focus on the fact that he was president on Sept. 11. He must convince the American voter that his actions on that day and afterward have made us safer. In short, he must convince us he has thwarted Osama bin Laden.
The question is important, and the answer is obvious: Osama bin Laden wants Bush to be president. Bush failed to protect us from terrorism in the elevated-threat period before Sept. 11. High-ranking members of his administration have come forward to tell how Bush failed to sufficiently investigate the threat. Bush failed to protect us from terrorism on 9/11 itself during his now-famous seven minutes of inaction before finally responding to the emergency. Finally, Bush has failed to protect us from terrorism in the three years since the 9/11 attack.
To be sure, the administration has taken many actions which purport to be aimed at terrorism. The problem is that none of them has actually weakened terrorists or protected America. Bush failed us from day one by misunderstanding terrorists' motives. He declared that they hate us due to our freedoms. This is absurd on its face. If terrorists hate America due to the Bill of Rights, they must hate nations that grant even more freedoms-like Canada or Holland-even more. Even more absurdly, terrorists must hate us less now than they used to, as we have passed the USA Patriot Act under the rubric that we must give up our liberties to gain security. We may have less liberty now, but the terrorists certainly don't hate us any less.
Terrorists hate us because of our policies, not our principles. They hate us due to our interventionist policies in Arab nations and Israel. We might want to alter our policies to make America safer, or because they were misguided in the first place. We might not. In either case, obscuring our adversaries' true motivations certainly doesn't help us defend ourselves.
This is why Bush's wars in the Middle East have not made us any safer. When the sovereign nation of Afghanistan demanded further proof of bin Laden's guilt before turning him over, the U.S. invaded. This unilateral action did not earn us any friends in the Arab world. It is by now practically clich?? to note that every bomb that falls convinces another young soul to take up the cause of terror. It is clich?? because it is true. We killed more civilians in Afghanistan than died on 9/11, adding kindling to the fires of hate. To make worse, we failed to catch bin Laden.
The next step in Bush's war on terror was to invade Iraq. Iraq has never had any connection to al-Qaida. Intelligence analysts have said so since the beginning and the 9/11 Commission has found as much. Nor did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction. Weapons inspectors said so all along and even the most dedicated hawk must by now admit as much.
Iraq posed no threat to the U.S., so invading it couldn't possibly have made us safer. Invading Iraq has actually made us less safe by creating more terrorists. The Arab world feels more persecuted by U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, the ranks of insurgent fighters seem to swell every day.
Military strength does not mean safety. Our troops showed their strength invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but we neither caught bin Laden nor crippled al-Qaida. Instead, we've only strengthened it. So who does Osama bin Laden want to be president? The man who has spent the last three years not only failing to capture him but also creating new converts for his cause: George W. Bush.
opinion@dailycardinal.com
