WASHINGTON – It’s now plain that the administration’s color-coded threat alert is more useful as a political barometer than a terror warning system.
Despite al-Qaida’s bombing of Americans in Saudi, despite signs Osama bin Laden is still calling the shots, despite his renewed threats against America, despite increased terrorist “chatter,” and despite the discovery of al-Qaida agents scouting new U.S. targets to hit, the Homeland Security Department has decided there is no need to raise the threat level from yellow to orange. The risk of a terrorist attack, according to your government, is not high right now.
Meanwhile, the State Department is evacuating Americans from Saudi Arabia and other places abroad, and the FBI is warning state and local police to be on the lookout for car bombers and bomb-laden planes buzzing around gas refineries and nuke plants.
What’s going on? Politics.
Recall that as we went to war, the administration hiked the threat level to orange – high – warning that al-Qaida would use the war as a pretext for launching attacks against America. Homeland Security sent us scrambling for duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect us from nerve agents and other alleged weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein allegedly shared with bin Laden in their alleged terror co-op.
Never happened.
But the warning dovetailed nicely with the administration’s main excuses for launching a preemptive strike on, and takeover of, Iraq. After the war, it was safe to lower it back to yellow, because our troops had driven Saddam from power and the threat had passed, or so the administration said.
Then bin Laden struck. Oops.
In not elevating the warning now, the administration explains it has no specific and credible threats of terrorist attacks against targets in America.
But it didn’t have any concrete threats when it raised the alert to orange during last year’s 9-11 anniversary. That move was based on increased “chatter” among Islamic fundamentalists overseas.
Nor did it have specific and credible threats of a major homeland attack during the Iraq war. The justification for raising the alert to orange was based almost entirely on theory – a theory that never panned out, but one that helped convince the American people that al-Qaida and Iraq were linked.
Difference is, now the administration has a potential political liability going into the 2004 campaign cycle, and is loath to draw attention to it.
Al-Qaida was supposed to be “weakened,” not revived; and bin Laden was supposed to be “on the run,” not issuing new attack orders. Raising the threat level now would only confirm al-Qaida’s resurgence, and call into question the administration’s focus on Saddam while bin Laden was still on the prowl.
A similar political dynamic was at work last October – right before the mid-term congressional election – when al-Qaida blew up nearly 200 people, including several Americans, in Bali. It also attacked Americans in Kuwait, the Philippines and Jordan.
Even as the CIA director warned Congress that the al-Qaida threat environment was “as bad as it was the summer before 9-11,” the administration chose not to warn the American people.
The White House explained that there were no specific or credible threats, yet the State Department cited “credible indications” of new al-Qaida attacks in issuing a 6-month-long “Worldwide Caution” that warned U.S. workers abroad to confine their activities to their homes and offices. In an update, it cited “the statement released by Usama bin Laden” in a tape-recording authenticated by the CIA.
So what would have been the harm in alerting Americans at home? None, really. The administration warned them unnecessarily around Sept. 11, 2002, and again during the Iraq war, without much harm (although many hardware stores refused to refund duct-tape sales, and some hapless souls entombed themselves in plastic-sealed rooms).
But Republicans were another story.
The potential harm last fall was political, just as it is now. Amplifying the al-Qaida threat and bin Laden’s survival just weeks before the congressional election may have hurt the president’s party at the polls, jeopardizing his chances at control of the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Most Republicans, at least the ones who listen to Bush dittohead Rush Limbaugh, were under the impression that bin Laden was not just on the run, but dead. Why spoil that?
But they can be forgiven for such wishful thinking (savvy Limbaugh notwithstanding), given how the president studiously avoided mentioning bin Laden by name, even while talking about the state of terrorism at the State of the Union.
Now the president himself is up for re-election. He doesn’t want to run against bin Laden. Why put the orange or red spotlight on him?
Most Americans think their government would never play politics with national security, at least not after what happened on Sept. 11.
Think again.
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