FOR A party whose President has said he is "not concerned" about Osama bin Laden, the Republicans certainly want to remind voters that they should be. A new attack ad created by the party depicts terrorists -- including bin Laden -- in a clear attempt to scare Americans into voting Republican. What is really frightening is not the terrorist bogeymen that the Republicans want us to fear but their attempt to use their invented, unending "war on terror" to scare voters into granting them greater power and blindly supporting an agenda that has nothing to do with fighting terror.
The ad itself is a laughable imitation of a famous Lyndon Johnson ad that helped win his election by exploiting fears of a nuclear war. In fact, the Republicans' recent ad employs the same language about "the stakes" of the upcoming election. If you ignore the fact that the ad looks like a trailer for a bad horror movie and that it clearly represents the desperation of a party almost certain to lose power in two weeks, the ad warrants consideration because it highlights Republicans' attempt to encourage the public to cooperate with their agenda by scaring them into submission.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ad is that it makes no argument. The solution to the threat of terrorism is not stated but implied. Apparently, it goes without saying that the Republicans can better protect us from terrorists than the Democrats. The claim is not, however, made explicitly.
The reason, it seems, is that such a claim could not be supported by fact. We are no safer now, after five years of a Republican-led "war on terror" than we were in 2001. The policies enacted by the Republican administration and Congress have, as detailed in a recent security report, actually made the threat worse. The indefinitely "heightened" precautions taken domestically, especially at airports, seem designed mostly to prevent attack strategies that have already been tried -- none of which, it seems likely, would be attempted again anyway. But we are not safe even from terror techniques used in the past. As we learned last week from the tragic death of Yankees' pitcher Cory Lidle, it is apparently still possible to fly a plane into a building in Manhattan.
It is not the Republicans' fault that we are not now safer than we were five years ago. Indeed, we cannot ever be truly safe without sacrificing far more than such safety is worth. This summer's ban on liquids on flights and its subsequent lifting highlight the fact that most Americans are not willing to sacrifice their way of life for increased security. Life itself carries a degree of risk that must be accepted, and violence is one of those risks.
Ultimately, the biggest problem with the Republicans' "war" is that it has no clear goal. Unlike a traditional war, it is not clear at what point the war will have been "won." The war will, inevitably, become never-ending. Exterminating terrorism is as impossible as eliminating conventional warfare. Terrorism as a tactic has always been used by the desperate and dispossessed. Even eliminating terrorism stemming from Islamic extremism is impossible relying on military force. More appropriate goal would be dismantling al-Qaeda or destroying Osama bin Laden's power -- but, of course, neither of these objectives serves the Republicans' purposes.
What the Republicans gain from an endless war is a public willing to hand over liberties at will and go along with whatever policies the Republicans can tie into the overall concept of the war. The neo-conservative wing of the party wanted to invade Iraq long before the idea of a "war on terror" was created.
In 2000, the Project for a New American Century, a think-tank whose members included the Vice President and others in the Bush administration, published a document which lamented the fact that the transformation to a more hegemonic, imperialist foreign policy would be slow, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event." Sept. 11, 2001, provided the administration with the "new Pearl Harbor" they needed. They have used the fear generated by that day's horrific events to centralize their own power and to pursue the policies suggested by the PNAC as long ago as 1997 -- all as part of the "war on terror."
Having mastered the art of doublethink, it seems the Republican Party has taken yet another clue from The Party in George Orwell's 1984. In order to maintain a sense of national purpose and to inspire blind obedience, the government in 1984 is always at war and insists that it has always been at war. Like citizens of Orwell's Oceania, the Democrats and others opposing the Bush administration share the blame for accepting the Republicans' language as the only possible way to discuss the current state of affairs. Rational citizens and leaders must realize that the framework the Republicans have built does not correspond to reality, or their power will only become more unquestionable. I only hope they can forgive this bit of thoughtcrime.
Daniel Colbert's column usually appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at dcolbert@cavalierdaily.com.
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