The Choice Before Us

John F. Kerry wants terrorism to be reduced to a nuisance.  George W. Bush is hyping and nudging terrorism to become a world war. 

That, in a nutshell, is the choice for voters.  By this time next week, the election will be past.  Regardless of which candidate wins the White House, problems loom.  If Kerry wins, the pressures on him will be immense to sweep 9/11 under the rug.  Vice President Cheney has already said on Meet the Press that we should put 9/11 behind us (a statement conveniently forgotten in the campaign).  The White House opposed forming any investigative commission as long as it could, stonewalled every congressional and commission request for key information, and is quietly opposing 9/11 litigation to prevent discovery.  Individuals willing to enrage the public by undermining every kind of investigation, through any avenue, are not going to go away after November 2.

If Bush wins, he faces the possibility of impeachment.  Immediately after our election, it has been hinted, combat in Iraq will intensify.  Quiet moves have already been made to prepare a military draft, though I see no likelihood that a new draft bill in Congress will include girls.  As more and more information trickles out, it becomes more apparent that every argument used to justify invading Iraq was a pretext.  The pretexts, furthermore, were developed and coordinated both inside and outside the administration, with private individuals including media persons as well as government officials.  The White House has little chance of maintaining a pretense for long that it just somehow, regarding Iraq, didn’t know better.

Meanwhile, every prudent undertaking that could genuinely improve safety or reduce our vulnerabilities is being neglected at best.  Rather than adopt intelligent diplomacy, the White House has been throwing gasoline on the flames.  Rather than secure domestic sites, the administration has neglected to safeguard the nation’s borders and ports, nuclear and chemical sectors.  Genuine security experts still point out major gaps in aviation security, with AVSEC breaches reported almost every week.

Rather than adopt consistent measures to stop up security breaches including financial chicanery from top to bottom, the administration turns a strangely blind eye to managerial ties that bind contractors in even our most sensitive sectors to foreign interests both private and governmental.

That anyone like Bush could pretend to protect and defend the American people is Orwellian, but not just Orwellian.  He’s using the old guerrilla tactic in reverse (without being an underdog), using his biggest weakness as a weapon, since in “wartime” genuinely patriotic individuals are reluctant to point out lapses.  Like envious Iago the petty, he traps the other party with its own virtues.

The tactic is thus basically an assault on the polity, penalizing most those people who most care about participatory democracy.  It benefits someone who wishes to undo every achievement left by the New Deal and producing a large and self-confident middle class, including a strong Social Security system, corporate regulation including a Securities and Exchange Commission, and retirement pensions and health insurance for ordinary people.

Often, domestic policy and foreign policy are discussed as though they were separate.  In this administration, the two are blatantly part of one picture.  The objective of treating nineteen skyjackers as though they were the late Soviet Union is the same as the objective of tearing down the economic safety net at home:  these guys are pocketing our peace dividend.

Margie Burns lives in Cheverly, Maryland.  She can be reached at margie.burns@verizon.net.