UPDATED: MAY 16, 2007

“THE POLITICS OF FEAR, PART 2:
            THE DEMOCRATS MUST GO ON THE ATTACK; THE DEMOCRATS MUST GO ON THE ATTACK???”

We finished up Part 1 of this two-part series with: “While McCain is offering earnest programs for ‘winning in Iraq’ and Romney is spouting ‘lower taxes, balancing the budget, and small government,’ no longer winners for the Republicans, there is Giuliani doing the Rove fear thing.  Giuliani is using fear just the way Hitler and Mussolini did.  First to finally establish the political dominance of their party.  For if given the War and etc. the Democrats manage to lose in 2008, they will be an electoral non-factor for many elections to come.  Second, if Giuliani can win, he can then finish off the project that BushCheney have started so effectively since Jan. 20, 2001: the establishment of the ‘Unitary Executive.’  As I have illustrated many times in this space, it is nothing but fascism by another name.  And boy, does that make Giuliani Rove’s boy.  Rove is a political genius, an evil one, but genius nevertheless, and he doesn’t want to stop working his evil magic now.” 

And so now, how should the Democrats respond to all of this if they want to use the issue to help them win the next election?  Well, not by saying what Hillary Clinton said in response to Giuliani’s charge that the Dems. cannot be trusted to defend the country against “terrorism,” only Republicans can.  According to Clinton ”One of the great tragedies of this administration is that the president failed to keep this country unified after 9/11. We have to protect our country from terrorism --- it shouldn’t be a Democratic fight or a Republican fight."  And not what Barack Obama said either: “Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low and I believe Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics. . . .  America's mayor should know that when it comes to 9-11  and fighting terrorists, America is united. We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure."  (Both quotes from: “Updated: 2007-04-25 13:21:45, “Democrats rebuke Giuliani for suggesting Democrats' election would lead to terrorist attack,” AP). 

These two worthies did exactly what Giuliani and behind him Rove/CheneyBush want them to do: respond on issues of process: “we need to be united,” “it shouldn’t be Democrats and Republicans,” “we’re in this together,” “you’re politics are divisive.”  And as for Obama buying into Giuliani and “America’s Mayor.”  Oy!  He wasn’t my Mayor when he was Mayor of New York City.  Part of Giuliani’s campaign is the perpetuation of the myth that he is, or was, “America’s Mayor.”  Democrats have no business playing into that.  When the great Keith Olbermann of MSNBC went after Giuliani for his “only Republicans can protect you” speech, he too went in on the process.  “See.  He is using the Politics of Fear.  That’s bad.  He should apologize and correct himself.” 

But Clinton, Obama and Olbermann all miss the point.  The process response, the “how dare he say such things” response, is precisely what Giuliani and the other Rovian Republicans want the Democrats to come back with.  Because a) you then can avoid the substance, and b) you can easily respond to a “you just shouldn’t do that” with a “oh yeah, who says?” or “we can do it as much as we want to, nyah, nyah, nyah.”  And so the argument descends to the level of the sandbox, which is exactly where they want it to be. 

So the “we should just all play nice" tack that just won’t work.  What will work is to get onto the substance, and get onto it loud and clear.  Attack, attack, attack.  Republicans in general and the Bush Administration in particular are the best equipped to protect the country against terrorism (however it might be defined)?  Oh yeah, Oh really?  In light of the following facts? 

Protecting us from future 9/11s?  As is well known, the first one happened to have happened on their watch.   It happened that Richard Clarke and others warned them about the danger of al Qaeda from the beginning of their reign of error.  It happened that they had received multiple specific warnings about a threatened dire terror event, from the famous 8/5/01 Presidential Daily Briefing paper to whatever warning was leaked to Judith Miller and The New York Times by a “top-level White House source” in the summer of 2001 (Daily News Attytood, www.pnionline.com. 5/18/06).  It happened that under the Clinton Administration two comparable plots, one in 1998 (the multiple airliners attack) and one in 2000 (the LAX attack), were unearthed and aborted.  The Busheviks didn’t protect us the first time.  Why should we count on them to protect us again?  (For the Democrats at this time, it is hardly necessary to get into any discussions of Georgite complicity in 9/11 at one level or another.) 

1. As far as Osama bin Laden is concerned, the man that in the first Republican Comedy Hour McCain said he would follow to the gates of hell (presumably risking Air Force One to do so), and all of the others chimed in with “we’ll get ‘im,” is still out there. Bush has had 5 ½ years to get him. Nothing, niente, nada.  (There are multiple possible reasons for this: a) bin Laden is a U.S. government asset, b) bin Laden is a Bush Family asset, c) the U.S. has got him, has had him for quite some time, but ain’t telling, because 1) he is of much more use for Georgite propaganda supposedly out there than he would be otherwise, and 2) they would possibly have to try him in at least a semi-open court and boy, would he have some stories to tell.)
    
2. If the Georgites did not consciously lie the US people and Congress, as well as the UN, into the War, they were totally incompetent in handling the intelligence information about what was the true situation in Iraq in relation both to WMD and relations with al Qaeda (both non-existent).  3500 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later why should the Georgites be trusted to do any better the next time around.
    
3. They have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting a war for  which it is ill-equipped and not properly trained.  In fact, they have managed to take the world’s mightiest military force and be well on the way to rendering it incapable of doing anything effectively except massive bombings (apparently on the Georgite agenda for Iran if they can ever get to it).
    
4. They have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.
    
5. They have turned the world against us.
    
6. They have done virtually nothing to strengthen homeland security in the homeland.  (See a fine article on this one in The New York Times of May 8, 2007, “Answering Al Qaeda,” by Clark Kent (I kid thee not!) Ervin, former Inspector General of the Dept. of Homeland Security.)
    
7. They have demonstrated clearly that they are totally incompetent when it comes to handling natural disasters, much less future man-made ones that could have even worse aftermaths.
    
8. They have depleted the national treasury.
    
9. As for Iraq, they say that they are the only ones who want to see the war through to “victory” there.  Well, the first step in achieving victory is to define it.  And they aren’t even capable of doing that, much less achieving it.  That is of course unless “victory” is defined as Permanent War, something Giuliani is already close to talking about.
    
10. And as for Giuliani personally?  There’s his doing nothing to set up an anti-terrorist Operation in the NYPD after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993; the failure to link Fire Department radios with those of the Police Dept. despite many requests, which failure likely lead to many of the 343 9/11-related deaths of New York City’s Bravest; the probably ego-based establishment of his Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center complex, in the building that housed the local offices of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and who knows what lese despite specific warnings from experts not to do so; his denial of the air pollution danger immediately following the tragedy, which has affected the health of tens of thousands of people; his failure to guard the wreckage of the buildings so that a proper study of the cause of their collapse could have been carried out; and his attempt to deal with the post-9/11 situation in New York City by attempting to extend his term of office. 

So indeed, the country does have to be afraid, of the Republicans and what their continued occupation of the Presidency would mean for its future, by Giuliani or any of the others, on all levels, from the National Defense to the preservation of Constitutional Democracy, the defining core of our great nation. 

Get away from process, Democrats.  Let’s get onto the substance.  That’s something we can win with.

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