A friend of mine, in his LiveJournal, brought this post at Philosoraptor to my attention. According to said friend, this post is, "at least a semi-even-handed look at why bin Laden might want John Kerry to win in November... and why he might not." I read it for myself and here was the response I posted in my friend's comments.
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The administration has trotted out its newest sophistry.
Just because the administration is saying it, doesn't mean it's not a legitimate concern.
Many Republicans honestly believe that Bush would be more effective against terrorism than Kerry would be, and they think that al Qaeda knows this.
I'd say he's been pretty effective so far. No further attacks on US soil, Libya and Pakistan cooperating like never before, and the very real possibility that Iran will undergo popular revolution against the mullahcracy.
This administration was so eaten up with derision for the Clinton administration that it ignored their warnings about al Qaeda. They ignored their own PDBs indicating that an attack in the U.S. was imminent, and consequently did nothing to prevent 9/11.
My understanding was that the outgoing Clinton administration didn't emphasize the threat from Bin Laden much at all. Also, the PDB's in question were not at all specific and certainly couldn't be construed to provide enough info to prevent 9/11. In my opinion, it was a complex system which failed in several places that allowed it to take place. A system which, by the way, Bush inherited from the Clinton administration (though, admittedly, I don't think it's much better, if at all).
Then the administration squandered the good will the rest of the world had for us after 9/11, alienating our allies and, in fact, the rest of the world by—among other things—attacking Iraq on obviously trumped-up charges about WMDs, and by announcing that anyone who wasn’t with us was against us.
What a good portion of the world (i.e. Europe) was thinking was not so much "We're with you in your hour of need," but more like "See what your arrogance has wrought? Now be good children and listen to your betters." When Article 5 of the NATO charter was invoked, it was used, in effect, to say, "Yes, this attack on you is an attack on us all. Therefore, we get to say how you respond."
The charges were not trumped up. Saddam had WMD's. He'd used them on his own people. He had not accounted for the destruction of weapons that it was *known* by the UN that he had. *Everybody*, including Democrats in Congress, said he had such weapons. All the evidence indicated that he had them. If Bush lied, so did everybody else. If there really weren't any weapons, then *everybody*, not just the administration, was fooled.
And, again, if the country we ultimately attacked had merely been unconnected with bin Laden in any way, this action would have merely been tragically idiotic. But no. The Bush administration allowed bin Laden to escape so that we could attack one of bin Laden’s enemies, the man bin Laden himself called “a bad Muslim.”
More and more evidence of connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda are coming to light. Whatever Bin Laden said about Hussein, they were connected, and recent evidence suggests a connection between Saddam and one or more of the 9/11 hijackers . This is not to say that Saddam had a hand in 9/11, but he may have been at least aware of the plans for something big.
I doubt that any reasonable person could have predicted that 2004 would find bin Laden still at large, al Qaeda largely intact and deluged with recruits, our allies resentful and distant, and America deeply divided. And this is not yet even to mention the fact that polls show that most Iraqis see us as occupiers rather than liberators, and that picture and videotapes showing torture of Iraqi prisoners by American troops are almost guaranteed to make that situation worse.
Our allies are resentful because we didn't come to heel like they wanted us to. Not to mention the growing scandal surrounding the Oil-for-Food program and many of those very same "allies." More and more it appears that they didn't want us to invade Iraq at least in part because they didn't want this information brought to light.
As for those polls he mentions, I haven't seen any and he doesn't provide links. If you read the troops' own words, though, it's clear that many Iraqis are glad we're there and glad Saddam is gone. We hear the news out of the remaining hotspots and virtually nothing from the rest of the country, at least in the mainstream media. Media bias, whether intentional or not, is becoming increasingly clear.
So when the Bushies say or—as they more often do—slyly suggest that bin Laden will try to influence the election in order to remove Bush from office, I suggest we remind them of the facts above. Even if bin Laden is dumb enough to think that Bush is more dangerous to him than Kerry would be, let us hope that the American people are not.
As I've shown, these "facts" are dubious. Nevertheless, what I've written doesn't prove that Bush would be more dangerous to Bin Laden than Kerry. I'm just saying that what he's written hasn't proven the opposite.
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In addition, I'd like to add that I personally believe that Bush is more dangerous to terrorists than Kerry. Especially given Kerry's stated intentions of involving the UN to a greater degree in the decisions on how to proceed. Should Kerry be elected, it would not surprise me to find that the reality of future events is not as bad as many of the dire predictions of Bush supporters. I accept the very real possibility that Kerry is currently pandering to the extreme and vocal left that appears to form the core of his support base. Nevertheless, when faced with a choice between Bush, who spends like a Democrat but is tougher on terrorism than any of his predecessors, or Kerry, who is a Democrat and will certainly try to spend even more than Bush (except on the military of course), but will probably not be as tough on terrorism, I'm afraid I once again must go with the man I think will a better job at one of the few things the President is actually authorized to do by the Constitution: protect the country.
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