Author: Cynthia Tucker
Publication: The Baltimore Sun
Date: February 16, 2004
URL: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.tucker16feb16,0,6967637.story?coll=bal-pe-opinion
By the time NBC's Tim Russert finished
interviewing President Bush, viewers were either frightened or flabbergasted
or both.
Frightened because Mr. Bush - announcing
himself a "war president" - used variations of the words "war," "terror,"
"kill" and "danger" more than 70 times in an interview Feb. 8 that lasted
less than an hour. It prompted memories of Cold War school drills and hiding
beneath the desk.
Flabbergasted because you may have
thought you had been mysteriously transported into an episode of The Outer
Limits. Was it Dec. 8, 1941? Or April 18, 1961, the day after the disastrous
Bay of Pigs invasion? Perhaps Sept. 12, 2001?
Actually, President Bush wants you
emotionally stuck in the horrible aftermath of the terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington. The weeks following the atrocities saw the president
transformed into a forceful commander-in-chief and brought him sky-high
approval ratings. With his ratings now down to about 50 percent, he'd love
to flytrap American voters in a 9/11 mind-set until November - which, he
thinks, would ensure his re-election.
But the strategy won't work. The
president's fearmongering merely created a strange discordance, since most
Americans don't consider the war on terror the most important issue facing
the country. A January poll by the Pew Center showed that only 37 percent
view defense and security as the nation's most pressing concern. Thirty-five
percent list the economy, while nearly 20 percent list other domestic issues
as the most important. (The rest chose other issues or none.)
Barring another attack on U.S. soil,
the presidential election won't be won or lost on the war on terror. Mr.
Bush beats the war drum too late; for the past two years, he has spent
precious little time enlisting the average American in the war effort.
Wars, after all, demand broad sacrifice;
but the president has been reluctant to call upon an America coddled by
affluenza to make any sacrifices. Indeed, a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks,
the president suggested patriotic Americans return to their routines -
starting with a trip to the nearest shopping mall.
Instead of raising taxes to pay
for soldiers and materiel, Mr. Bush pushed through a set of tax cuts that
heavily favored the wealthy, meanwhile producing a budget deficit that
threatens to make America the next Argentina. Instead of insisting that
Americans reduce their dependence on foreign oil, the Bush administration
went along with granting a tax exemption to small-business owners who buy
the biggest and costliest SUVs. Instead of emphasizing the hardships that
would accompany an invasion of Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney, et. al.,
made absurd predictions about American soldiers being greeted as liberators
and an oil-rich nation that would pay for its own reconstruction.
And didn't they tell us we were
safer with the capture of Saddam Hussein?
The simple truth is that the United
States should be engaged in a grueling, long-term campaign against Islamist
fanatics. But that sort of war would likely have entailed an invasion of
Pakistan instead of Iraq. Pakistan has done everything that Mr. Bush falsely
claimed Iraq had done: It sheltered al-Qaida, and its scientists sold secrets
and parts for making the mother of all WMD - a nuclear bomb - to North
Korea, Libya and Iran. But a war against a nuclear power like Pakistan
may have involved thousands of U.S. casualties. It would have been a real
war.
Instead, Mr. Bush told us we'd stroll
into Iraq, overthrow Mr. Hussein, implant democracy and watch it bloom
throughout the region - ultimately bringing peace between Israel and the
Palestinians. In fact, the president still says that. (Yet, he continues
to fertilize the soil with American blood.)
If there's a war on, shopping malls
and SUV dealerships seem unlikely battle fronts.
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page
editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column appears Mondays
in The Sun.
