I just finished Ron Suskind's "The One Precent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of it's Enemies since 9/11". It is a serious look at Cheney's Doctrine of the suspicion threshhold requires action. What drives this doctrine? Fear! It permeates every aspect of the war on terror. Fear drives everything even our success and mistakes. Where there is bravado and courage there is also fear in the White House and GOP. The "what ifs" become fact and intangibles are irrelevant in the face of fear.
Fear is the path to the dark side in a democracy, in matters of terrorism and American politics. Both bin Laden, Bush and the GOP kick their fears around the block when they either want to avoid the responsibility or blame. They love and hate fear. Dennis Hastert's greatest fear these days is called "Mark Foley". George Bush greatest fear is called "the 2006 mid-term election". And bin Laden's fear is the loss of George W. Bush and his dark lord apprentice Dick Cheney.
People's fear boil down to three root things: loss of face, loss of influence and loss of power. Nobody has more to fear President Bush and the GOP. Their certainity and willful desire can't stand fear. So they overcompensate with lies, half truths and disinformation. Anything goes. This doesn't make things better. It is gasoline on a fire.
America has to sse there is something more important than fear. Fear works. On Friday Oct. 29th 2004, it worked for Osama bin Laden when he strategically released a tape message designed to influence the 2004 election. If Bin Laden is anything he is a cagey strategist. Bin Laden played the fear card and won big. In the fall of 2004 Bush's domestic rating tracked with bin Laden's rating in the Arab world. Since 2004 Bin Laden has gained while Bush's fell. The hearts and minds of the Arab world are in bin Laden's favor.
My fear is we have given Al Qaeda the moral high ground in War on Terror. Our actions in Iraq fed the fear of other national ambitions like North Korea and Iran be a members of a select nuclear club. North Korea announced it will test a nuclear bomb soon. This would be an act of war under Dick Cheney's One Percent Doctrine. The King of Wishful Thinking needs to lose his crown and come down to Earth.
The Cheney Doctine must be political checked with a severe rebuke at the polls or there might be worse thing to come.
The Mutual Assured Destruction deterrent doesn't hold weight with so many different actors holding the power of an atomic bomb and we can't act even if we wanted to! Too many mistakes can be made when fear and emotion drive out reality. We have hade some successes in war on terror but America is losing the mother of all battles in Iraq and hence the Arab street.