You may recall a few prominent conservatives - some of them elected officials - publicly expressing their longing for another 9/11, so that the country would be reminded of how good and safe it is under the protection of the Emperor President. You may also have noticed the rather absurd attempts in the right-wing blogosphere and elsewhere by reasonably intelligent, well-educated people to equate Al-Qaeda with the threat of Hitler or Stalin.
Since it is doubtful that your average conservative actually wants another 9/11 or sees no difference between Osama's hijackers and the Holocaust, there must be something else going on.
Additionally, you may have noticed that the farther the country moves away from those attacks, the farther 9/11 retreats into the past, the smaller the number of conservatives being voted into office becomes. This is no coincidence. Right-wing authoritarians (RWA) crave a black and white world. They think that's how the world should work and are unsettled when it doesn't. Grey is the enemy of the RWA mind.
The 9/11 attacks were the Nirvana of today's RWA. The country was united. The path was clear. The enemy was revealed. The world was black and white, us against them. That Republicans were in charge during this crisis and even ended up gaining seats in Congress and local elections during this time was just icing on the cake, a fact not lost on those on the right with Social Dominance Orientation (SDO).
As sanity began to return to the country however the right's difficulty with the subtleties of a complicated world became more apparent, something increasingly reflected in the right-wing blogosphere. The disdain by RWA of a grey, muddled existence lead to more and more posts lauding Bush's decisiveness, with only a few posts about the Bush Administration's accomplishments. Those particular posts have been, shall we say, colorful in their 24-esk narration and revision of recent history. The right's tendency to confuse decisiveness with competence, knowlingly or unknowingly, is vital in understanding what motivates their decision-making process and voting habits.
This is why the right keeps trying to equate the threat Al-Qaeda with the threat of Hitler and Stalin. This is why they long for another 9/11 experience. They're in effect trying to turn back the clock to their former Utopia, when the world made sense to their RWA minds. The higher they raise the threat of another terrorist attack the simpler their world becomes again. Black and White, Us versus Them... these are the times when conservatives get elected and the SDO types know it. These are the times of fear.
The problem of course comes when the fear dissipates. Suddenly the country expects you to govern. The answer? More fear. Well-timed leaks. Saddam. The threat of WMD. And now the threat of Iran; the key word being threat. It's the fear they're after. That's why they won't attack Iran before the 2008 elections. Maybe right before the elections to push the 'stay the course' and 'don't change horses in a time of war' memes. They certainly won't do it early enough to let the voters see another disasterous reconstruction effort or endure the retaliation that is almost certain to follow.
Atrios once noted that it's in the public's interest to keep such people out of power and he's right. Most of history's black and white moments involved dead bodies, and a lot of them. Voting out people who are psychologically dependent on such moments would seem both smart and prudent. Just ask the people of Iraq.