They add a fear factor to every course of action they pursue, whether it is their radical foreign policy of preemptive war, their call for tax cuts, their desire to privatize social security, or their implementation of a radical new health care scheme. This fearmongering began with the administration’s political exploitation of the 9/11 tragedy, when it made the fight against terrorists the centerpiece of its presidency. Bush and Cheney launched America’s first preemptive war by claiming it necessary to the fight against terrorism. Yet it is almost universally agreed that the war has actually created an incubator in Iraq for a new generation of terrorists who will seek to harm the United States far into the future. Even well-informed friends of the Bush administration have adopted this view. Senator John McCain, in a 2004 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, expressed his concern that we had “energized the extremists and created a breeding ground for terrorists, dooming the Arab world” in Iraq,[84] and former National Security Adviser (to Bush I) Brent Scowcroft bluntly said of the war in Iraq, “This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism.” [85]
Among the few who have spoken out against the politics of fear, no one has done so more forcefully, and with less notice in the mainstream news media, than former vice president Al Gore, who was the keynote speaker at a conference in February 2004 titled “Fear: Its Political Uses and Abuses.” Gore analyzed the administration’s continuous use of fear since 9/11 and expressed grave concern that no one was correcting the misinformation being fed to Americans by Bush and Cheney. “Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction,” Gore observed. “President Dwight Eisenhower said this: ‘Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.’ But only fifteen years later,” Gore continued, “when Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, became president, we saw the beginning of a major change in America’s politics. Nixon, in a sense, embodied that spirit of suppression and suspicion and fear that Eisenhower had denounced.” Getting right to the point, Gore continued, “In many ways, George W. Bush reminds me of Nixon more than any other president…. Like Bush, Nixon understood the political uses and misuses of fear.” While much of the press has ignored Bush’s and Cheney’s fearmongering, letters to the editor occasionally surface to address it, like the letter from Steve Mavros to the
By and large Bush, Cheney, and their White House media operation have churned out fear with very few challenges from the media. Cheney regularly tells Americans that we are “up against an adversary who, with a relatively small number of people, could come together and mount a devastating attack against the United States,” adding, “The ultimate threat now would be a group of al Qaeda in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon.”[87] Did the interviewer ask how likely that might be? Or what the government was doing to prevent it or to minimize its impact? No such questions were raised. The Bush White House understands that the media will treat their fearmongering as news, because fear sells news; it keeps people reading, watching, and waiting for updates. There is more fear to come, for the Bush White House is relying on it in their campaign for the 2006 midterm congressional elections. This, in turn, will set the stage for the 2008 presidential election, where authoritarians will make certain fear is a prominent part of the platform.
Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, gave the word to the political troops at a meeting of the Republican National Committee in early 2006. “America is at war—and so our national security is at the forefront of the minds of Americans,” Rove said, as he rattled the White House saber. “The United States faces a ruthless enemy—and we need a commander-in-chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats.”[88] I have said little about Rove, principally because this is not a book about the Bush White House. But Karl Rove has all the credentials of a right-wing authoritarian, and if he has a conscience, it has hardly been in evidence during the five years in which he has been in the public eye. He is conspicuously submissive to authority, exceedingly aggressive in pursuing and defending the policies and practices he embraces (namely, whatever George W. Bush believes, or that which is politically expedient), and he is highly conventional. As a political strategist, Rove appreciates the value of fear, so it is not surprising that he proclaimed that the 2006 midterm elections would be won or lost based on how frightened Americans are about terrorism.
A writer for
In 2001, terrorists killed 2,978 people in the United States, including the five killed by anthrax. In that same year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, heart disease killed 700,142 Americans and cancer 553,768; various accidents claimed 101,537 lives, suicide 30,622, and homicide, not including the [terror] attacks, another 17,330. As President Bush pointed out in January [2004], no one has been killed by terrorists on American soil since then. Neither, according to the FBI, was anyone killed here by terrorists in 2000. In 1999, the number was one. In 1998, it was three. In 1997, zero.[*] Even using 2001 as a baseline, the actuarial tables would suggest that our concern about terror mortality ought to be on the order of our concern about fatal workplace injuries (5,431 deaths) or drowning (3,247). To recognize this is not to dishonor the loss to the families of those people killed by terrorists, but neither should their anguish eclipse that of the families of children who died in their infancy that year (27,801). Every death has its horrors. [89]
On a broad base, Jim Harper, the director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, has observed, “We can compare the risk of terrorist attack to other dangers our country has historically faced: During the height of the Cold War, we drew within a few figurative minutes of midnight—the moment that the Soviet Union and United States would hurl their world-ending arsenals at one another.” Harper further noted that “we didn’t throw out the rulebook during the Cold War. The executive branch did not make extravagant claims to power,” as are Bush and Cheney.[90]
Despite such realities, the Bush administration continually presents the public with a worst-case scenario. Clearly, the most serious threat from terrorists is that they obtain a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). But we face another very serious threat: namely, that our own government terrorizes us so much that we are willing to give up the ideals of democracy in exchange for reducing our fear. This threat to democracy seems well understood by Osama bin Laden and his troops. I have noted in the past, and I believe even more strongly today, that “the real danger posed by terrorism for our democracy is not that they can defeat us with physical or military force,” rather “terrorism presents its real threat in provoking democratic regimes to embrace and employ authoritarian measures that (1) weaken the fabric of democracy; (2) discredit the government domestically as well as internationally; (3) alienate segments of the population from their government, thereby pushing more people to support (passively, if not outright actively) the terrorist organizations and their causes; and (4) undermine the government’s claim to the moral high ground in the battle against the terrorists, while gaining legitimacy for the latter.’”[91] This is precisely what is happening in America today, as Bush and Cheney are being sucker punched by Osama bin Laden. Authoritarianism is everywhere in the federal government, not because Bush and Cheney do not realize what they doing, but because they are authoritarians, and they are doing what authoritarians do. In the process they have weakened the fabric of democracy, discredited the American government as never before in the eyes of the world, caused people to wonder if terrorists have a legitimate complaint, and taken the United States far from the moral high ground in refusing to abide by basic international law.
In citing the worst-case potential of the next terror attack in the United States—a nuclear weapon, a “dirty bomb,” or a chemical or biological weapon that could kill or injure millions of Americans—the Bush administration is not making a baseless argument. Such things could happen. But there is much that can be done to reduce the potential, as well as the impact, of a WMD terror attack. It would, therefore, seem logical—if the Bush administration is truly concerned about such a catastrophic terror strike in the United States—for it to focus its efforts on such measures, rather than simply frightening people.
How serious is the Bush administration about addressing the possibility of another major terror attack in the United States? Remarkably, not very. Notwithstanding the level of importance the administration purportedly places on fighting terrorism, according to the 9/11 Commission’s 2005 year-end “report card” Bush and Company
