The manifest danger Islamic radicalism presents to the United States ought to be unifying American politicians around programs to keep the country safe. But their behavior this summer shows they prefer petty partisanship.
A series of decisions Congress must make in September – particularly on measures to authorize the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program and military tribunals for terrorist detainees – will determine whether they can find a common purpose.
The two sides should be looking at each others’ agendas – the Democrats’ advocacy of homeland security upgrades and some conservative ideas on terrorist “profiling”– to improve security.
And both should seriously consider the prospect of creating a domestic security agency like Great Britain’s MI5, particularly given the FBI’s evident failure – as reported in The Washington Post this week – to adapt its criminal investigation culture to antiterrorist intelligence-gathering.
But, based on the record, the prospects for cooperative action are not good. The minute Britain announced the arrest of radicals planning to blow up U.S.-bound airliners over the Atlantic, Republicans and Democrats began squabbling over what it meant – especially for their November election prospects.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., put out a press release declaring the plot “demonstrates the need for the Bush administration and the Congress to change course in Iraq and ensure that we’re taking all the steps necessary to protect Americans at home and across the world.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman responded, “Instead of focusing on political attacks, we should focus on the fact that we are at war and need every tool to win the war on terror. If Harry Reid had his way and (had) killed the (USA) PATRIOT Act and ended the terrorist surveillance program, authorities would be less able to uncover terrorist plots.”
Had the terror plotters not been stopped, 10 or so 747s might have exploded in mid-air on Aug. 16, one reported target date, or yesterday, Aug. 22, a portentous date in the Islamic calendar. More people might have been killed than those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
If it had happened, would the catastrophe have roused American politicians to halt their nonstop partisan warfare in the realization that we are all in this together?
Five years ago, Sept. 11 brought Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats. But this year, the evidence dismally suggests, an 8/16 or 8/22 would have intensified the politicians’ finger-pointing.
The blame-casting hasn’t ceased despite a war in Lebanon in which the Islamist radical group Hezbollah was the perceived winner and as its sponsor, Iran, continued work on nuclear weapons. The danger to us all is mounting, but U.S. politicians are thinking primarily about making partisan points.
They were at it again when U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor issued a tendentious ruling striking down the NSA surveillance program and after President Bush made a fervent case that premature withdrawal from Iraq would be a moral and strategic “disaster.”
Democrats think they can gain the advantage by declaring Iraq a diversion from the “real”war on terror against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which they say they’d fight aggressively in Afghanistan and with measures to protect U.S. ports, chemical plants and airplanes.
As Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean put it, “We are bogged down, spending half a trillion dollars in Iraq, which could be used to do the things that the Democratic Party and the 9/11 Commission have recommended, which is to make our airports and our nuclear power plants and our train stations safe here at home.”
