This is a great post from Andrew Sullivan about America's divide.
TWO AMERICAS: Yes, there are two different countries within a country right now. But it's not red and blue exactly. It's not even secular and religious. Or north and south. More accurately, as blogger FrozenNorth explains, it is between those who believe we are at war and those who believe we aren't. I'm in the former camp. So are some Democrats, Republicans and Independents, despite their deep differences over other issues. As 9/11 recedes, I'm not even sure this is a vote-winner for Bush; but it strikes me as essential that he make it the central issue in the campaign and that Kerry be forced to tell us why he believes it is not a war, and how he believes we can defeat terror while returning to the "law enforcement" policies of the 1990s. I may be unable to support a president who would defile the constitution. But equally, no one should support a candidate who cannot be trusted to take the war to the foes of this country. Before they take the war to us - again.
I think many who deny the war do so because they have a passionate dislike for Bush. If Clinton were President I don't think anyone would question whether we were at war, but Republicans would argue that President Clinton wasn't taking it seriously enough. Any President would have invaded Afghanistan. The real question is whether we're going to pretend the danger ended there. Clinton treated the first World Trade Center bombing as an isolated incident instead of a warning. Bush’s critics seem to be taking the isolated incident argument up where Clinton left it. How many isolated incidents do we need before we conclude that a terror network means us harm?
Half the country is arguing that Bush went too far going into Iraq. More than that, critics argue that 911 was used as an excuse to attack Iraq. Some theories are that oilman Bush was greedy for black gold. Other theories are that neo-cons want to rule the world. All critics agree that taking out the dictator has made the world less stable because it has angered our allies and made the world fearful of us. This is very much a post-Vietnam mindset.
First, I have yet to hear a good argument as to why the world fearing us is dangerous. Fear will help rogues keep their distance. The tone taken by Libya, Syria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia has been positive since Saddam was booted. This gets little attention.
Second, it’s trying times like these that allow us to identify our real allies. It’s obvious that countries like France have always been ready to be on board as long as there was something in it for them. The moment that their interests diverged from ours, they were more than ready to go their own way. Let’s not forget that France gave us the Vietnam problem to begin with. Their passivism led to rise of Hitler.
Our alienation of certain “allies” has been a positive. Weeding out the fair weather friends is a good way to properly allocated U.S. resources when it comes time to identifying and helping our real friends. What good would come of having the world pretend to love us if they never intend to help us in our times of trouble?
The problem the administration got into was one of public relations. They couched the war in nation building terms to sell the war to doves and WMD terms to sell the war to hawks. Both were easy cases to make. No one balked when Clinton used the armed services to nation build in Bosnia and no one balked when Clinton said Saddam had WMD.
What’s becoming evident is that doves didn’t mind Clinton pointing out Saddam’s threat, because there was never any intention to solve the problem.
The Bush administration was naïve in thinking they could continue Clinton’s rhetoric about WMDs and Nation-Building and get support. Not because Bush was just using the rhetoric, but because Bush would actually put action behind those words. That is going too far. Bush suffers because he has the wherewithal to do something about the problem.
If the world is actually more dangerous now, why haven’t we suffered more attacks? They were coming at a pretty steady stream in the 1990s. Now that we’ve made the world more dangerous they seem to have stopped.
Sullivan is the right that the real issue in this campaign is whether or not we’re at war. Our safety depends on the answer.
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