No one should look forward to terrorism

July 11, 2007

About a month ago, Dennis Milligan, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, sounded pretty excited about the prospect of domestic terrorism. “At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,” Milligan said.

Yesterday, Rick Santorum echoed a similar sentiment on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.

Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.

“Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania.

As Avedon put it, “Shouldn’t it concern us that Republicans are constantly talking about how people will all wise up when the next terrorist attack at home comes? I mean, they really seem to be looking forward to it, and they take great delight in the thought that, by God, people will see things differently when it happens.”

Apparently. I simply cannot fathom such a twisted worldview. Americans will support Bush’s Iraq policy if we experience another 9/11-style attack? We’ll rally to a neocon vision of the world if thousands of innocents are slaughtered?

Does this make any sense at all?

Were it not for some very annoying server trouble today, I would get into this in more detail, but in the meantime, consider some insightful posts on the subject:

Yglasias:

[W]hile clearly on some level the conservative movement would like to make the country safer from terrorism, on another level everyone knows that mass fear of foreign threats to Americans’ physical security are a boon to the conservative movement’s fortune. On the one hand, this creates systematic incentives to overstate the extent and nature of the real threats facing America. On the other hand, it creates systematic incentives to ensure that such threats as do exist are never ameliorated. In particular, it gives everyone a very strong self-interest in not understanding the extent to which overreacting can be counterproductive since both the overreaction itself and the counterproductive blowback may serve the interests of the Republican Party.

Jon Swift (mocking the right-wing line):

Another terrorist attack, terrible as that would be, would not just reverse the war’s bad poll numbers, it would also help the President…. But just any terrorist attack will not suffice. It’s going to take a really big one. And a failed terrorist attack would be even worse than a successful one as Jonah Goldberg pointed out in reaction to the latest bombings in Great Britain. “Anyway, the irony is that from a policy standpoint, it seems to me that security officials have to view things like the failed London bombing as basically no different than a successful bombing,” he wrote on The Corner. “But because the bombing failed, the policy options to security officials are far narrower precisely because the bombing failed and therefore didn’t rouse the sort of political reaction it might otherwise have.” So if we are going to have a terrorist attack, let’s hope that it is a good one.

I don’t believe that the right genuinely looks forward to domestic terrorism. That’s crazy. I do believe, however, that conservatives, based on comments from Santorum, Milligan, and others, think Americans are misguided and confused about the threats facing the U.S. Death and destruction, they believe, will wake us up and get us back on track behind the president’s vision of the world.

It’s a dark and disturbing approach that I’ll never be able to relate to.

what makes these idiots think we’ll support their misguided policies if we have another attack? the only reason we might have another attack is because of their misguided policies.

  • 1) Bush/Cheney are tanking in the polls, and Dems are beating Rethugs in head-to-head matchups for 2008. The war is polling disasterously. Announcements are being made about the rebirth of the Electric Car for chrissakes! The Halliburton worldview is being rocked!

    2) Key conservatives – Chertoff, Brownback, Milligan – suddenly and all at once – start announcing a strong sense that an attack on our soil will in fact happen, and moreover before the next scheduled election. Its almost as if they know something.

    3) The Neocons hold the keys to all of the power, intelligence, media – everything one would need to both spur an attack and cover one’s tracks.

    Tin foil hat, or legitimate reason to be very afraid? Hmmm. . .

  • Not to get all conspiracy theory, but when you put this together with Chertoff’s “gut feeling” about this summer, doesn’t it make you wonder if they know something we don’t? That maybe they have plans? After all, look what a boon 9/11 was for them- all the fear that got them where they are now, and are loathe to leave.

    So, I disagree. I think they DO look forward to an “attack”. That would ensure that the Republic of Fear is with us working to dismantlge our democracy for good.

  • MilitaryAnalyst.com has an article entitled something like “Why we need another terrorist attack”. You are giving the right entirely too much credit, CB. If they aren’t actively hoping for such a thing, and aren’t actively trying to make one occur, I think they think that if one happened, it would be better for their political fortunes. And so we have the benign neglect of the Aug2001 PDB, and of the report that levees would break, etc.

    For whichever reason they seem to be hoping this will happen, and that makes them just as culpable as any terrorist ever was.

    And any way you color code it, this stinks to high hell, and smells like aiding and abetting the enemy. Osama never has to attack us again, all he has to do it put out credible disinformation, and our government and their followers will attack our countries foundations themselves.

    That all said, the terrorists do only have to be right once, and we have to be right every time. And there is always the possibility that we will have another attack.

    And as I alluded in another thread, thse are scary people and these are interesting times.

  • So…after almost 6 years of talking about how much safer we are because of the war in Iraq and Bush’s commitment to the war on terrorism, we will, if we are attacked again, feel the truth of that talk and the policies?

    This is the stuff of Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland. Bizarro World stuff. Crazytown logic.

  • I had a discussion with my conservative Dad a couple of years ago when he expressed exactly the same sentiment. The only difference is that now, the conservatives are so desperate that public figures who should know better are making these statements.

    It’s ironic that this is another example of conservatives practicing what they preach against. How many times have we had to hear, “Liberals want us to lose in Iraq!”, the reasoning apparently being that we hate Bush so much that we’d be willing to kill troops to punish him. Here, we find conservatives admitting that they want to cling to power so much that they want another terrorist attack and the accompanying dead civilians. The difference is that I’ve never heard any mainstream liberal wistfully think about the benefits of murdering troops.

  • The Bush administration has used fear of terrorism as an excuse to accumulate unaccountable power, ever since 9/11 handed them an opportunity to do so.

    Point out my tinfoil hat if you must, but here is their logic:

    1) the best way to keep America safe is for our policies to prevail.
    2) for our policies to prevail, we must remain in power.
    3) widespread fear of terrorism helps keep us in power.
    4) an actual terrorist attack would do more good (helping keep us in power) than bad (some acceptable loss of life and property).

    Of course they think that way. Is there any doubt?

  • Right wingers delight in showcasing the lack of domestic terrorist attacks since 9/11/01 as ipso facto proof of the correctness of Bush’s policies. If we later experience a “successful” attack, they will instantly shift the rhetoric to

    * “rally ’round the flag”
    * “at least we have a plan, what’s the Democrats’ plan?”
    * “the terra-ists only have to be right once, we have to be right 100% of the time.”

    If they had any shame or logical consistency, they would immediately admit, “OK, you guys were right, Bush’s policies failed to prevent an attack.”

  • Milligan and Santorum are way behind the 8-ball. Bill O went so far as to suggest a target — SF’s Coit Tower — a year and a half ago.

  • Are you absolutely sure that Bush and Cheney weren’t halfway expecting some sort of terrorist attack back in 2001, just not as severe and successful as the one that actually happened? What if they had been expecting something relatively minor that they could jump all over to look good, grab moral & legal authority, win votes in 2002, and justify going after Sadam, but were shocked at its success? That could explain the degree to which they ignored warnings and the way Bush was not especially surprised and was not immediately moved to safety when the news first reached him, as well as their truly phenomenal resistance to discussions of the run-up to 9/11 and their eagerness ever since to change the subject and to hide everything in the white house from public scrutiny?. Probably it’s just massive and embarrassing incompetence on their part, but there are still a lot of open questions.

  • I’ve got three words for Rick “Sanitarium” Santorum and the rest of the NeoCon 9/11 Hit Squad: Re-investigate Nine Eleven

  • We are supposed to be grateful that Bush has prevented another attack so far, but we will be even more grateful after there is another attack.

  • As crk suggested at #3 – don’t you get a feeling that they’re prepping everybody for something? It’s not hard to be psychic when it’s all part of the program.

  • So why are ignorant has-beens like Santorum being given air time at all? They’re still just as irrelevant as they were when they were in office.

    And as for predicting future terrorist attacks, well….it worked for them on 9/11, didn’t it? They might not have been able to pull off another successful operation since then, but that was the one that got them where they are today.

  • As crazy as the wingnuts are, I agree with CB that they don’t really want a terrorist attack to actually happen. But they’re currently trapped in a worldview made up of lies and the justifications for lies. They aren’t unaware of the polling, and what that means to the GOP. They just know that a Democratic president will let the terrorists attack us at will, and that mental image is closing around their throats to the point where they might, just a little, hope that a really liberal place like San Francisco would get attacked soon enough to make Bush’s poll numbers go back up to the halcyon days of 2001. OK, maybe they hope that a lot. They even admit that they want certain places attacked. (as beep52 points out)

    OK, I just talked myself out of the moderate position. I agree with everyone else, these people really do hope for an attack. But good luck convincing a moderate of this idea. It sounds fucking crazy.

    But when has that ever stopped them?

  • Wow, weird.

    systematic incentives

    What system? I think Matt Y. has been reading too many scholarly books and absorbing too many big words of late, unless he means that the Republicans have become the system… I think he should cut back to finishing one book a week.

  • When we allow the fearmongers and the terrorfear they use to fuel a wide range of American political posturing( creation of DHS,terror level color,magnification of ‘foiled terrorist plots’ and open ended terror speculation(my gut feeling…attack coming…need to do more before it is too late…the whole range of Bush/Cheney lawbreaks from FISA abuse to warrantless police state styled activity) we can expect they will be very tempted to abuse that ability.

    And indeed the fearmongering this Bush/Cheney WH is willing to put in place to achieve political goals or promote desired postures that can be used to inflate or maintain other Bush/Cheney desires is undeniable.

    Terrorism is much like communism which for several decades after it came to the global stage was cast as being a demonic force that must be contained,constrained and confronted. It becomes very easy to assign a range of powers and abilities to terrorism that it may not have or ever be able to fulfil. We know that global communism was never what we were led to believe it was many times from the 1920’s out through the early 1990’s. It was seen as a threat to the USA because it was alien to American capitalism interests primarily. Oddly today the USA does lots and lots of business (the capitalist sort) with China. Communist China.

    So the mythmaking comes easy. The demythfying perhaps not so easy.

    When one considers the sheer geograhical size of the USA and the scale of American infrastructure,economic capabilities and American global militarism it becomes clear that we are a very big,very aggressive and very able to inflict pain and death nation. We are the land of trillion dollar war making. A planetary giant.

    The GWOT that the Bush/Cheney regime put in place has some very real flaws in the why,what and where components it is based on.

    It would have been more accurate to have stated that the USA would and will protect its global imperial interests,its ‘open door’ international desires and goals and will fully empower American militarism as it deems required.

    Invading Iraq is not about fighting terror. Conflating terrorism with the results of American hegemony having taken place around the globe for bad reasons or motives is a lie.

    But that phrase…a lie…is at the center of much American post WW2 conduct is it not? It surely frames large parts of post WW2 CIA conduct.

    It definitely frames much of what the Bush/Cheney regime is based on.

  • Those of us who saw this ‘splendid little war’ in Iraq as unwarranted and most probably disastrous long before it started or very early on, were often accused of hoping for failure and of giving comfort to the enemy, Of course, we weren’t, but there is no convincing a true believer.

    Given that perception, these believers may feel justified in hoping for an attack or in ‘accidently’ looking the other way and thus leaving the door open for an attack. For the good of the country, you know.

  • No, I’ll say it – some people on the right want a domestic terrorist attack, absolutely! They want it because such an attack would instantly validate their every fear of the Terrorist Menace that could strike them at any moment. And on the other side, their actions in response to their 9/11 hysteria have been nothing short of disastrous for this country. So which way are their thoughts going to run – fully facing up to the terrible results of their actions, or hoping for a “Deus Ex Terrorista” to fall out of the sky, showing everyone They Were Really Right All Along? For way too many people, validation of their own fears trumps any attempt whatsoever to find out what’s really going on or holding our would-be protectors to account when they fail.

  • Re: op99 @ #9
    Right wingers delight in showcasing the lack of domestic terrorist attacks since 9/11/01…

    Ah, but you forget the “unsolved” anthrax terrorist-attacks in the weeks following 9/11 (leading up to the raping of our Constitutional Rights known as the “Patriot” Act), including the little dusting of the stuff that Senators Daschle and Leahy received.

    Speaking of Daschle, was it a coincidence that The Dick-tator tried to intimidate Senator Daschle from investigating 9/11? Put 2 and 2 together.

    Like Deep Throat said, “follow the money,” but the 9/11 Commission Report concludes that the source of the money used to carry out the 9/11 attacks is “of little practical significance.”

  • [W]hile clearly on some level the conservative movement would like to make the country safer from terrorism, on another level everyone knows that mass fear of foreign threats to Americans’ physical security are a boon to the conservative movement’s fortune. On the one hand, this creates systematic incentives to overstate the extent and nature of the real threats facing America. On the other hand, it creates systematic incentives to ensure that such threats as do exist are never ameliorated. In particular, it gives everyone a very strong self-interest in not understanding the extent to which overreacting can be counterproductive since both the overreaction itself and the counterproductive blowback may serve the interests of the Republican Party.

    I mean, still, great point, though. The guy is smart as hell and I probably couldn’t have said it better myself.

  • These guys are pathetic. We are not asleep to terrorists and we are just as awake by not having an attack as we would be by having one. Either way we still don’t support Bush’s war policies.
    These idiots want war so bad they are willing to use fear to garner support. Are we like General George Custer that an attack would make us chase whatever was in front of us with no thought of consequences.

    These yahoo cowboys are using the threat of an attack to ignore our failed approaches in the past to deal with such incidences.
    Many of us would be highly suspicious of who would be behind such an attack but these guys have already decided who needs to be attacked and even where, yet no attack has even occurred here yet.
    To me it’s just a build up for another premptive strike, only on Iran this time. Suddenly Chertoff has a gut feeling, then we are getting the rhetoric of “the smoking gun could come in the shape of a mushroom cloud”, just as Bush sends the THIRD aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. Everything is ready for the “attack”.
    Even Bush is screaming, “Somebody stop me!”
    Impeach this Administration will ya?
    Everyday I live in fear of my president…of what he might do next. Not of “terrorists”. I lived through 50yrs of Soviet missiles pointed at me and Bush and Cheney scare me more. Santorum and the others are of a mob mentality and they are hungry to gather one.

  • THEY ARE GEARING UP TO ATTACK IRAN
    Sunni Shiite Kurd…They are all al qaeda if we call them that. The terrorists are in Iraq and Iran and we just need an excuse to attack…. like a gut feeling or….(fill in the blank)
    Impeach already!!!!

  • Milligan, Santorum, (gut-feeling) Chertoff, (we know where they are) LIEberman… It does look like they’re getting ready to re-hang the fly paper (we’re fighting them there, so we don’t have to fight them here) from Iraq to Iran.

    Though how they’re going to *explain* another successful attack on American soil after 6yrs of trumpeting (elephants are good at trumpeting. Even the yellow ones) the triumph of their tactics… Buggers the mind (and yes, I am aware that, technically, the phrase is “boggles the mind”. But that’s not what’s happening to mine)

  • On Saturday, Americans learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 cancelled a major U.S. raid into Pakistan designed to decapitate much of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership. Now, a new CIA assessment details the steep price the U.S. is paying for President Bush’s failure to enforce his mantra of “no safe havens.” U.S. intelligence analysts, the AP reports, have concluded Al Qaeda has “rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

    For the disturbing details, see:
    “CIA: Resurgent Al Qaeda Now at Pre-9/11 Capability.”

  • Unless the terrorists are Iraqi, how would a terrorist attack increase the support the war in Iraq? If anything, such an attack might make Americans wonder why we’re putting so many resources in Iraq.

    Just look at the reaction to the terrorist attacks in Spain.

  • The thing that people seem to ignore, or be totally oblivious to, about 9/11 is that it was as much, if not more, a psychological attack as it was a physical attack upon the good American People. The fact that ReThugs like Santorum and other members of the NeoCon 9/11 Hit Squad exploit and manipulate the fear caused by 9/11, and in fact prolong the psychological trauma, is despicable.

  • I honestly believe all these right-wingers are saying what they WANT to happen, because if it did, that would teach everybody who wants to take a reasoned approach a lesson. And if it happened, that would put the nuts in a “superior” position.

    When most people “speculate” about future events, they do predict what they want to happen, not anything they know — don’t forget the religious nuts who’ve been predicting and praying for the world to end for hundreds of years. They want it, want it, want it! I don’t think these guys are any different.

  • The minute Bush let up on Bin Laden the countdown began on the next terrorist attack.

  • TFHT 1. These loons are hoping for an attack because it will make The Deciderer look bad. They’d also spin it to make Democrats look bad, result: The GOP is saved!

    Except for Squirtoff. He’s toast.

    TFHT 2. Osama bin Laden send his RePuppetcan pals an IM.

    They’re going to look excessively fucking stupid when the next big one is brought to us by some Regents University students who thought they could trigger Armageddon by blowing up the Museum of Natural History. But of course if the people involved are Caucasian Christians the RePugs will claim it was a student prank gone awry.

    and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK.

    A failed attempt at mass murder is unfortunate? Someone check Dog Pounder’s fridge for human remains, he is one sick (and incoherent) puppy.

  • Like deepthroat said: follow the money. Who profits MOST from this extended war, and from the analogous Vietnam War? The Federal Reserve (which, by the way, is not part of the government). I would urge all interested in understanding the deeper implications of this “war on terror” to look up a man named Aaron Russo and his movie America: From Freedom to Fascism, as well as interviews. Also… vote for Ron Paul!

  • Santorum: “…some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK.”

    Remind me, what happened in the UK? In London, two cars with dud bombs in them got towed away by the police. And two days later, two bozos set themselves on fire whilst driving their jeep into the concrete blocks outside Glasgow airport.

    These events, at worst, might be characterized as a nuisance. At best, they opened up helpful new leads for counter-terrorism officials. To describe them as “unfortunate events” suggests Ricky is a terrorist sympathizer. The only people hurt were the bozos that gave themselves second-degree burns – and are now haunted by a blown 72-virgins assignment – and the only other people now in an unfortunate situation are those that have since been arrested.

    And I have no hesitation calling Ricky a terrorist sympathizer. Read his words – and Jonah Goldberg’s – and they amount to an argument that they need terrorist attacks in order to vindicate their worldview. To justify their extremism.

    They sympathize with the terrorists’ cause, because in their words, a totally botched terrorist attack is “unfortunate” and “narrows your policy options”. The Rickys of this world need death and destruction. Otherwise they become obsolete.

    And they admit this withb their own words.

  • > THEY ARE GEARING UP TO ATTACK IRAN
    > Sunni Shiite Kurd…They are all al qaeda if we call them that.
    It’s quite likely that the term al Qaeda was invented in the US (in 1995 or so by a con-man employed to provide evidence about OBL&co– it was printed on the front of a training manual IIRC). Once the name was reported and known, they picked up the brand and ran with it.

  • Go check out the blogger The Cunning Realist, who last year started categorizing this longing for another attack on the United States as the Waiting for Yamamoto Watch after the Japanese admiral responsible for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  • I thought we were fighting them in Iraq, so they wouldn’t come here. If the attack here, then obviously the fighting in Iraq has not accomplished that “stated goal”.

    One would think that their inability to protect the American public would work against them. Of course, once that segment of the American public succumbs to fear, there’s not much you can to to put logic into their brain.

    Hence the support the invasion of Iraq received at first. 9/11 occurred because of US military presence in the middle east (unless Osama was lying about that, but what sense would that make). In order to “show them” they go and park a sharp stick at the angry tiger. And they’ll be surprised when that tiger takes another swipe.

  • I have a hard time believing that Cheney will just skip merrily out of office in January 2009, particularly if he must hand power over to a Democrat.

    I fear we will see a large-scale attack NEXT October. Large enough to allow them to declare Martial Law and suspend the election.

    I hate thinking that this could happen in my country …

  • The american public is being played like a fiddle by the NeoCons and their fascist corporate cronies. Of course there is going to be another terror attack, because they are the ones colaborating/planning it! This telegraphing of what will happen is just another tool to maximize the fear reaction that will overcome reason when their trap is sprung. Wake up america, and put the power of the government back in the hands of the people before it is too late!

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