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'Pre-election plots' and the politics of fear
Ever since the train bombings in Madrid in early March capsized the Jose Aznar government's re-election bid, US pundits and pollsters have grappled with an unanswerable riddle: Is al-Qaeda plotting a repeat on US shores to coincide with the November election, and, if so, how would an attack affect the outcome? With the administration of President George W Bush issuing a surfeit of terror alerts over the summer, the speculation has only intensified.
It is, of course, difficult to establish the veracity of "Al-Qaeda's pre-election plot", as a Newsweek cover story recently labeled it, and virtually impossible to predict how an attack, of unspecified scope, would play at the ballot box. But the drumbeat of terror warnings from senior Bush administration officials, apparently bolstered by fresh intelligence from European and Pakistani security agencies, has made it equally impossible to ignore.
Most recently, the administration cited specific threats against financial targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC, in an August 1 briefing by Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - though it later emerged that the intelligence was dated. Meanwhile, a sense of impending doom has been created by virtue of a conspicuous security presence in major urban centers, not to mention full-page DHS newspaper ads that advise Americans to "set aside supplies you'll need to survive three days at home" in case of an attack.
But skeptics contend that while it's prudent to let the public in on credible threats, the administration's spin, if not its conduct of the "war on terrorism", is directly linked to its re-election strategy. Ridge sneaked a neat plug for the administration into his August 1 briefing, for example, saying the revelations were "the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror".
"When Secretary Ridge links the threat to effusive praise about the Bush administration's 'war on terrorism', it raises questions that it's a fairly transparent effort at using the threat warning as a campaigning opportunity," said John Gershman, co-director of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), a left-leaning think-tank, "particularly when it comes at the time of the Democratic National Convention." The Democratic Convention ended on July 29, and opponents of the Bush administration argued that the terror alert was intended to deflate any post-election "bounce" newly minted Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry might have garnered from it.
The administration's credibility was not helped by whisperings in July that it was examining the legalities of postponing the November election in the event of an attack. Democrats, many of whom still chafe at the "stolen" election of 2000, expressed disbelief, forcing prompt administration denials. The White House has also been stung by allegations, first made in The New Republic, that it has upped the pressure on Pakistani intelligence to deliver a spectacular pre-election "October surprise" named Osama bin Laden.
Republic of fear
Taken together, the unyielding focus on the terrorist threat and the war
in Iraq have elevated national security and foreign affairs to the top of
the US public's election concerns for the first time since the Vietnam war,
according to a poll by the Pew Research Center released last Wednesday.
The public is split over who would handle Iraq better, but a USA Today poll taken after the Democratic Convention revealed that, by 54% versus 41%, the public trusts Bush over Democratic challenger Kerry when it comes to fighting terror - the only major issue in which Bush has significant advantage. Still, there are too many variables to know whether another attack would reinforce deference to the commander-in-chief, or provoke mutiny.
"In the past, when there have been, during elections, foreign international crises, there's generally been a rally-around-the-president, rally-around-the-incumbent impact," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center, in comments to Asia Times Online. "But inasmuch as an important part of President Bush's appeal is how good a job he's done on terrorism, the issue is whether people would then think the opposite - that is, in the end, he hasn't really protected us."
The supposition that al-Qaeda is so emboldened by its success in influencing the election in Spain that it hopes to replicate it in the United States lies behind much of the current conjecture. But Kohut says critical differences make Spain ill-suited as a guide for prophesying the fallout of an attack in the US.
"In Spain there was almost no public support for sending Spanish troops to Iraq," said Kohut, "and secondly, there came a view that the Spanish government was lying about who attacked that train. Neither of those issues are germane here."
By most accounts the Aznar government's clumsy handling of the attacks' aftermath sealed its fate. It continued to blame ETA (the separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Liberty), even as contrary intelligence emerged, apparently fearful that the public would link the attacks to Spain's participation in the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq.
But the Iraq factor might play out differently in the US. According to the Pew data, a bare majority of Americans still believe the war was justified. They are, however, now split - 45-44% - on whether Iraq helped or hurt the "war on terrorism". Back in February the disposition was 62-28%, so a pre-election attack could strengthen the growing belief that the Iraq war has not made the US safer. On the other hand, an attack might simply reinforce the idea that Iraq and al-Qaeda were always linked, a belief a majority of Americans still cling to.
John Gershman of IRC says the nature of an attack, more than anything else, might determine the political consequences. "If we have another attack that is of a sort that everyone looks at each other and says, 'You know, we never thought of that,' it's not clear to me that's as much of a black mark against the Bush administration," he said, "as opposed to if it's an attack in an area that the administration has come under criticism for devoting inadequate resources."
Therein lies the greatest danger for Bush. Democrats have rounded on the administration's efforts to secure the homeland, alleging, for example, disproportionate expenditure in Republican constituencies and fealty to special interests in the fashioning of safety standards for potential private sector targets. Lobbying by the chemical industry was effective in watering down federal oversight provisions in the Chemical Facilities and Security Act, for another example. If an industrial chemical facility were targeted, the Kerry campaign could therefore say "I told you so" with some legitimacy.
If, however, a "soft target" such as a public bus or shopping mall were struck, the public might conclude that such targets are simply too numerous to protect, whatever the administration's record. Such an attack would also likely reinforce the feeling that the US is facing an existential threat, and defer to whichever candidate it deems capable of eliminating it.
Implicit in speculation about the "pre-election plot" is the assumption that al-Qaeda, or kindred spirits, has a preferred candidate. A recent New Yorker article quotes a message from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, an alleged al-Qaeda affiliate, published after the Madrid attack. "We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections," it said, lauding the utility of Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism".
The candidates have danced around this issue. The Bush campaign has, at times, elided the threat to the United States with one to the administration - by emphasizing the possibility of an attack on the upcoming Republican Convention in New York, for example - implying that al-Qaeda fears a second Bush term. Kerry meanwhile has suggested he would be the more dangerous foe by accusing Bush of fostering anti-US sentiment and thus aiding al-Qaeda's recruitment drive, while promising to wage a more "effective" war on terrorism - blasting Bush for "letting" bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, for instance.
Gershman doubts al-Qaeda has a favorite, however. "I think al-Qaeda may view this as an opportune time to demonstrate that, three years after [the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001], it's still alive and kicking, rather than it having a specific agenda of how it wants to influence the election," he said. "We have to recall that al-Qaeda is really in a longer-term transformational, revolutionary struggle. It doesn't see the primary issue as whether Bush or Kerry is the president of the USA."
It may not ultimately matter if, when or how al-Qaeda plans to strike the US. The deeply polarized US electorate is already preoccupied with threats, real and illusory. Another attack would undoubtedly sharpen the terrorism debate, but the rhetoric is, by now, so practiced that both candidates could conceivably spin any eventuality - catastrophic or benign - to their advantage.
