My uncle (who is an ardent Republican) asked me a few weeks ago whether I expected a terrorist attack against the United States designed to affect the US election. And how did I think it would affect the election?
I thought about it for a moment (this was in the wake of the Spanish attacks) and responded that it depended on the timing. More than a couple of weeks (two or three) in advance of the elections and I would expect such an attack to favor Kerry's chances. The reasoning being that once the initial hysteria after the attack had passed the recriminations would begin. It would become an issue to the American people that once again the Bush administration had failed to protect the United States (never mind that this is a very difficult task).
But.. if it was just before the elections, the inevitable "pulling together" in the face of adversity that so characterizes America would likely result in a Bush victory. I then suggested that this would be just what Bin Laden would want. (Which viewpoint surprised my uncle I think.)
As I reasoned it, Bush has been both terribly ineffectual (other than the initial attack on Iraq) in the "war on terrorism" and he had pissed off most of the world's Muslims with the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, most analysts in the intelligence community seem to feel that the general terror situation is much worse now than it was prior to the invasion. We have de-stabilized the entire Middle Eastern region and gained dubious access to oil (unless we get an independent Kurdistan out of this--which is unlikely).
There is an article in the Guardian on this topic.
Posted by artandscience at June 27, 2004 09:34 PMI think I had seen some analysis that a second Bush administration is what Al Queda would prefer. The analysis and recommendations provided by Anonymous in his book were featured at TalkingPointsMemo a week or two back and it was pretty severe stuff. It was, I think, misinterpreted, but what he was suggesting was, given the fix we're in and the lack of stability, we need more force and a larger presence, not less: total war was the short summary. Some objections were raised to that, but I think the objectors glossed over that that his argument was predicated on the current mess and was not where we would have started 14 months ago.
Now that we're run out of Iraq, tossing something looks like sovereignty on the table as we did, we'll see what happens.
Posted by: paul at June 29, 2004 04:42 PM