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 were given five Fs, twelve Ds, and two incompletes in categories that included airline passenger screening and improvement of first responders’ communication systems. The bipartisan members of the 9/11 Commission found that “there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction,” according to the Washington Post.[*] “We believe that the terrorists will strike again,” 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas H. Kean told reporters. “If they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?”[92] When the president and his cohort continue to raise the threat of terrorism but refuse to implement even the minimum measures recommended by the commission, it is clear they are playing the politics of fear. No one knows when, if ever, terrorists will use a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, but using the issue to frighten people while not addressing the 9/11 Commission’s concerns is worse than irresponsible; it is cruel.
It appears that most Republicans are content to allow the Bush White House to engage in fearmongering if that is what is needed to win elections. Many contend that terrorism, after all, is a real threat, and they feel safer with Republicans in charge, because they believe Republicans will deal with the issue more effectively than Democrats. Of course, demagoguery is not new; there have always been and always will be politicians who appeal to emotions rather than reason, because it works.
There are, in fact, relatively few people who are truly intimidated by the possibility of terrorist attacks.[*] Those few who are genuinely frightened, however, help Bush and Cheney. Dr. Jost and his collaborators, in the study reported in Chapter 1, found that fear of terrorism is a useful recruiting tool for Republicans. When the Bush administration reminds people of terrorism, it clearly works to their political benefit. Jamie Arndt, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri, reported, “Reminders of death create anxiety that causes people to cling to cultural and societal touchstones.” Because the president is such a touchstone, “he may benefit from keeping [terrorism] in people’s mind,” Arndt said.[93] This finding is corroborated by public opinion polls. While political exploitation of terror does not make a tremendous difference in voting behavior, it has been sufficient to keep Bush in the White House. At the outset of the 2004 presidential campaign, President Bush was more trusted than Senator Kerry to do a good job protecting the country from terrorists by a substantial margin of 53 percent to 37 percent.[94] A CNN exit poll taken at the end of the race, after Bush had repeatedly raised the issue of terrorism, showed that people voted for Bush over Kerry on this issue by a similar—but better for Bush—58 percent to 40 percent margin.[95]
Fearmongering has serious political consequences. Timothy Naftali, a diplomatic historian at the University of Virginia who worked as a consultant to the 9/11 Commission, is troubled by the ramifications of Bush, Cheney, et al.’s use of fear and their politicizing of policies needed to deal with terrorism. A reviewer for Foreign Affairs noted that in Naftali’s view, “the Bush administration’s reliance on a ‘politics of fear’ has stymied a mature national conversation about counterterrorism. He urges the government to keep terrorism at the forefront of its concerns and pursue a pragmatic foreign policy while helping the public put the threat in perspective and evaluate the difficult tradeoffs between national security and civil liberties.”[96] Al Gore, in his keynote address at the 2004 conference on fear, also noted the consequences of Bush’s preying on American fears. “Fear was activated on September 11 in all of us to a greater or lesser degree,” Gore observed. “And because it was difficult to modulate or to change in particular specifics, it was exploitable for a variety of purposes unrelated to the initial cause of the fear. When the president of the United States stood before the people of this nation—in the same speech in which he used the forged document—he asked the nation to ‘imagine’ how fearful it would feel if Saddam Hussein gave a nuclear weapon to terrorists who then exploded it in our country. Because our nation had been subjected to the fearful, tragic, cruel attack of 9/11, when our president asked us to imagine with him a new fear, it was easy enough to bypass the reasoning process, and short-circuit the normal discourse that takes place in a healthy democracy with a give-and-take among people who could say, Wait a minute, Mr. President. Where’s your evidence? There is no connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.’ At one point, President Bush actually said, ‘You can’t distinguish between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.’ He actually said that,” Gore added, and with disappointment explained how even he had trusted Bush to do the right thing, but that Bush had abused the trust people had in him.[97]
In short, fear takes reasoning out of the decision-making process, which our history has shown us often enough can have dangerous and long-lasting consequences. If Americans cannot engage in analytical thinking as a result of Republicans’ using fear for their own political purposes, we are all in serious trouble. I am sure I am not alone in worrying about the road that we are now on, and where the current authoritarianism is taking the country. I only wish more people would talk about it.
The study of authoritarianism began during the Holocaust, as scientists could not understand why people in Germany and Italy were tolerating, if not supporting, Hitler and Mussolini. They wanted to know if that sort of blind allegiance could develop in the United States. Accordingly, they set about the task of finding out what types of people were susceptible to authoritarian leadership. After a half century, they have found answers, which I have outlined in this book.
*
For a copy of the full report, which also contains grades for some forty different recommendations previously made by the commission, see http://www.9-11pdp.org/press/2005-12-05_report.pdf.
*
Polls both in the United States and Western Europe show only a relatively small number of people are so concerned about terrorism that it has an impact on their lives. For example, a Harris Poll (February 4, 2004) in both the United States and Britain found that “[m]ost people in both countries do not worry a lot about a possible attack. People in Great Britain are slightly more worried than Americans about the possibility of a terrorist attack somewhere in the country, but the difference is very small. Twelve percent (12%) of the British, compared to 9% of Americans, worry ‘often,’ while 59% of the British worry ‘occasionally’ or ‘often,’ compared to 55% in the United States.” See http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=437.