On January 25, 2006, Hofstra University Political Science professor David Michael Green offered on this website a hard-hitting and clever (if way too long for actual use) T.V. commercial for use by the Democrats in the November campaign. Professor Green rightly challenged the Democrats to confront the Republicans across the country on their putative strength: national security. This essay outlines a strategy for such a campaign. And like Professor Green, I seek no personal aggrandizement; the following analyses are offered in the truest sense of “pro bono”, for the common good.

“Feeling” Safe versus Truly “Being” Safe

To begin with, the Democrats must start to draw a sharp contrast between the sham national security claims of the Bush Administration and what is entailed in really being secure as a nation. The Bush Administration has insidiously relied on a bait and switch and a sleight of hand to anoint itself as the protectors of Americans. The bait and switch was accomplished when the Administration took its eyes off al-Queda (along with Afghanistan) and turned them toward a weakened, sanction-ravaged Iraq. Iraq was soundly defeated in the first Gulf War and was then strangled by ten years of sanctions, coupled with regular air strikes purported to be protecting the no-fly zones, between the 1991 Gulf War and the U.S. invasion in March of 2003. The administration’s sleight of hand about protecting Americans are supposed to be proven in the negative: the U.S. hasn’t been attacked by terrorists since 2001, so the Busheviks must be protecting the country.

It is surprising that most Americans do not seem to hold this Administration accountable for being derelict in its duties to protect the nation in the weeks and months leading up to the September 11 attacks. This, despite the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing whose title was revealed by Condoleezza Rice in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission. She first claimed that this briefing was an historical document (as in something past). When pushed, she blurted out the title, which was: “Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside the U.S.” This warning, fewer than five weeks before the 9/11 attacks, sent the “commander-in-chief” on vacation. And this warning, it should be noted, followed a string of attacks (almost one a year) throughout the previous decade, from the USS Koll, to the “Millennium Plot” to the African Embassy bombings to Kovar Towers, all the way back to the 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. Nor did this crack national security team connect the dots that were in plain sight that would have led them to at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Americans should also recall that this same national security team allowed bin Laden to escape out the back door in Tora Bora, despite the Texas gunslinger pose that George W. Bush struck when claiming that we would hunt down the terrorists and kill them, because the U.S. wanted bin Laden dead or alive! Obviously, this crack national security team was too busy conning the country into a war to be bothered about pursuing the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

And where were the concerns for “security” when the Administration sent poorly equipped troops into Iraq, which was a war of choice, that cost far more lives than it should have. Military estimates have suggested that 80% of the deaths from upper-body wounds could have been prevented. Now there are at least 2,250 American men and women who will receive no share in the so-called “security” the Bush Administration claims to have purchased by invading Iraq.

It is surprising also that so few Americans hold the Busheviks accountable for failing to remedy the many failures in its approach to national security after the 9/11 Commission issued its recommendations. The Administration’s report card, four years after the attacks, was dismal, and yet the majority of Americans trust this cabal on “national security”?

It is impossible to predict just how and when the blowback from Iraq, illegal detentions, torture, and indiscriminate killing of civilians will arrive and in what form, but I don’t know any rational and minimally-objective person who thinks that attacking Iraq has made the U.S. population safer, and the Bush Administration’s policies have also made us less secure at home, in our “persons, houses, papers, and effects”.

The Democrats must also expose and neutralize the fear-mongering that the Machiavellian Bush Administration regularly employs to paralyze Americans and to play upon deep-seated, even unconscious, fears about everything from a future terrorist attack to the Avian flu. I constantly wonder why Americans are so frightened. We have a military with no close rival; we have vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons, many of them on hair-trigger alert; America spends more money on its military and armaments than the next fifteen or twenty countries combined. And yet we act like the most fearful people in the world, willing to be manipulated and further frightened by overt and covert references to our worst nightmares, willing to give away our liberties and to sit quietly as our Constitution is being shredded by an administration that unabashedly places itself above the law. Could this fear be a sign that we are tacitly aware that military might, in the absence of justice, fairness, and even-handedness, will never make us safe?

Americans must come to appreciate the difference between feeling safe (the prime example being the craziness we all experience when we travel by air nowadays) and really being safe. Let’s face it, as long as cockpit doors on airplanes are not reinforced and kept closed during flights, as long as all bags are not matched with passengers, and as long as all bags are not screened, all the nonsense people are forced to endure to fly these days does little to really make us safe.

Remember those scenes in 2002 of motorists lying down in their cars while pumping gas or crouching next to their cars while pumping gas, as the two D.C. area snipers (Lee Malvo and John Muhammed) were prowling the Eastern seaboard and randomly shooting people. This, despite the fact that the odds of being killed in a car accident on the road, far exceeds the odds of getting shot while gassing up! Oh, and whatever became of that 2001 anthrax investigation that was traced back to Fort Mead?

Aside from the inescapable fact that human beings are not particularly good at calculating or evaluating risks, we tend to fear the latest bogeyman rather than imminent, identifiable threats to our security.

What are Some of these Other Threats Against Which the Bush Administration has Failed to Protect Americans?

1. The Annual and Predictable Flu Season

During the 2004 Presidential debates Sen. Kerry confronted President Bush about the shortage of flu vaccines. Producing flu vaccine is not very profitable and so it would seem ill-advised to leave such manufacturing to the free market where profit is king. In the 1918-1919 flu season, approximately 40 million people died worldwide.

2. The Annual and Predictable Hurricane Season

It is now well-known that the Bush Administration’s culture of cronyism and privatization, of under funding key agencies and misusing state national guard units, and of being generally unawares and then far too slow to respond cost thousands of lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Lost in the furor over Dick Cheney’s mystery shooting was the release of a scathing 520-page report by a Republican congressional committee that ascribes blame to just about every agency involved in the aftermath of the hurricane, but reserves its harshest criticism for the ineptitude of the Federal government in what now ranks as America’s greatest natural disaster.

3. The Annual and Predictable (at least since 1999) Federal Budget Deficits:

It should come as no surprise to anyone who must balance a checkbook and live within a budget that borrowing trillions of dollars from China and elsewhere is rapidly becoming an issue of national security. The 2005 trade deficits were the largest in history, topping $700 billion. The Congress voted in 2004 to raise the total debt ceiling to $8,111,000,000,000. Not only does this portend higher and higher interest rates, coupled with a weaker and weaker dollar, but it erodes the ability of federal agencies, such as FEMA and DHS to save lives and property in the event of regular, predictable disasters. The 2006 budget for “Homeland Security” across the fifty states is $710 million, compared with a bill for Iraq that will surely end up costing between $1 and $2 trillion dollars by the time all is said and done, according to a recent study by Harvard Professor of public finance, Linda Bilmes and Columbia professor (and 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics), Joseph Stiglitz. What’s wrong with this picture? How can anyone believe that the Republicans are strong on national security?

4. The Almost Daily Warnings about the Environment, from Global Warming and Other Climate Change to Pollution.

The Bush Administration has done exactly nothing to slow down, much less reverse, the trends disturbing all respectable scientists concerning the warming of the planet due to greenhouse gasses. The seas are warming, the polar icecaps are breaking apart, the levels of carbon dioxide are double past rates, and this past year brought more intense hurricanes than in previous years. Thousands, if not millions, of children in the U.S. have been exposed to high levels of lead, and the EPA’s superfund for cleaning up polluted areas was allowed to expire shortly after Bush took office. When will Americans realize that clean air, water, and land are also matters of “National Security”?

National Security and Personal Insecurity

5. Workplace Safety

Unless you were backpacking in the Himalayas or hiding out in a cave, it would have been hard to miss the real-time broadcasts of the attempts to rescue trapped and suffocating miners in West Virginia, a couple of months ago. This is what happens when workplace safety boards are under funded or eviscerated. This is just one of many instances in which regulatory agencies have been undercut and undermined.

6. Growing Poverty in the World’s Richest Nation

Officially, only 37 million Americans are classified as below the poverty line. To be classified as poor, a family of four must earn less than $19, 307 and a family of two must earn less than $12, 334. Remember, this is “gross” money, not take-home pay and therefore it is pre-tax income. Based on these rates, the Census Bureau announced in August that 12.7% of Americans were poor, but it acknowledged that the percentage could be as high as 19.4%. People who work on poverty issues think that a more realistic poverty level would be roughly $30,000 for a family of four. Based on these amounts, some 75 to 90 million Americans would fall below the poverty line. It is not only a matter of national insecurity to these Americans, but if a person works full time and cannot make ends meet, this is a moral issue, a fairness issue, and a symptom of America’s skewed priorities.

7. Health Care, Medicare, and Social Security

Likewise, nearly 50 million Americans do not have health insurance. Many others cannot afford to utilize whatever minimal coverage they have. The Medicare prescription drug bill was one big giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry and one confusing mess for senior citizens and the poor. And George W. Bush’s first-term hobby horse to “privatize” social security reflects the disdain of Bush and his corporate cronies for anything that resembles some form of a social safety net, even one for which its recipients have paid in faithfully and in higher percentages than do the wealthy, since the FICA contribution caps at about $90,000. Here is another example of the Busheviks stirring up national insecurity where none exists!

8. Privatizing our Ports

And now this cabal and its corporate paymasters wants to privatize at least six of our nation’s seaports! If Americans learned anything from the events of September 11, it is that some things cannot be left to the profiteers, whose only allegiance is to greed. No corporation, much less a corporation from a state that has been associated with terrorism, should be placed in control of vital shipping ports. This is why the Transportation Security Agency was created after 9/11: the airlines are in the business of trying to make money and this involves customer service, not inconvenience and passenger screening. At present, only 5-6% of those 20 and 40 foot shipping containers that arrive in U.S. ports are inspected. And to make matters worse, in 2002 the Coast Guard estimated that it would cost $5.4 billion over 10 years to make necessary improvements in the nation’s ports. Last year, Congress appropriated $175 million for this purpose!

9. Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

Though the U.S. is a signatory to the NNPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), the Busheviks are formulating plans for mini-nukes, bunker-busters, and other potential first-strike weapons that would be easier to use than existing nuclear warheads. Such a new generation of weapons would only make us less secure, since chickenhawks, such as Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rove are just crazy enough to deploy them!

10. Security of Nuclear Power Plants, Chemical Plants, and other Infrastructure

What, pray tell, has been done to secure chemical plants, nuclear power plants and other infrastructure? After the London bombings much ado was made about the need to shore up subways, train routes, and large venues, such as stadiums, arenas, large office buildings, and so on. But just what has been done? That $710 million wouldn’t seem to scratch the surface to address these needs. I can only wonder what might have been, if we had not spent the $300-$500 billion dollars (thus far) creating the Jihadi University in Iraq.

Dr. Gary Alan Scott is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola College in Maryland. Email to: garyalanscott@yahoo.com.

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