Why the Republicans Can't Fight Terror

[Oilwellian]

This is most excellent and a must read:

To understand why a Republican administration has been unable to mount an effective war against terror, however, we need to look behind Cheney and Bush, and even behind the neocon architects and champions of the war in Iraq. The roots of the Republican failure to make us safer lie deeper. They can be traced, once again, to a distinctively Republican "pre-9/11 mind-set." This mind-set can be boiled down to a set of fundamental beliefs. When we measure these beliefs against the requirements of an effective counterterrorism strategy, we quickly understand why it would be a calamity for American national security if Cheney and Bush were reelected on Nov. 2.

1) Government is the problem, not the solution.

Hostility to government, distrust of government, the need to downsize government, to get government "off our backs" -- these are the central tenets of Republican political philosophy. But an effective war against transnational terrorism is violently at odds with these primitive anti-governmental passions.

Having come into office boasting about its distrust of government, the Bush administration fell into rhetorical and mental confusion on the morning of 9/11. If he had been completely faithful to his principles, Bush would have mechanically announced: "It is your money, and therefore you cannot have airport security." But he obviously could not say anything of the kind. That is, a gap opened up between an irresistible public need for government action and the administration's ideological discomfort with government action. This rude clash between necessary policies and memorized slogans was by no means harmless.

Deep down, Bush and Cheney do not believe that the government has any business managing collective resources to solve common problems. This seems to be one reason why they have been dragging their feet on homeland security. Preparations for a bio-terrorist attack in a major urban center cannot be left up to the free-market or individual initiative. To stockpile vaccines, community assets must be managed by public officials. The administration is not inactive in these areas, of course. It bows to practical necessity, but it does so in a halfhearted way because vigorous government action contradicts its anti-government reflexes. When defending tax cuts during a national emergency, revealingly, administration spokesmen routinely lapse into pre-9/11 rhetoric. Without thinking it through, they recycle their claim that private individuals invariably know how to use their money better than the government. Its residual attachment to this pre-9/11 idea goes a long way toward explaining why the administration has shortchanged domestic preparedness against a future terrorist attack.

(much more, click for day pass)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/09/16/ideology/

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. No, they can't fight terror for one simple reason:

they need the constant threat of terror to keep the masses docile so that they can dismantle everything and turn us back to a feudal aristocracy.

It's not that they can't fight it, it's that they won't.

Though the analysis is otherwise partly correct, I think the biggest reason is simply that they can't afford to not have an outside threat.

[drdigi420]

2. If they were serious about killing terrorists.........

They'd have shot themselves in the head a long time ago.

[Bandit]

3. It is hard to fight something you create.

Through their policies of exploitation and racism they create the hatred that abounds throughout the world against Americans. They will never change those policies as they mean great wealth to them.