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Tomgram: An American Tipping Point?
Losing the Fear Factor
How The Bush Administration Got Spooked
By Tom Engelhardt
It's finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know -- that moment when the
curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that
billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks
around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long.
Starting on September 11, 2001 -- with a monstrous helping hand from Osama bin
Laden -- the Bush administration played the fear card with unbelievable
effectiveness. For years, with its companion "war on terror," it trumped every
other card in the American political deck. With an absurd system for
color-coding dangers to Americans, the President, Vice President, and the
highest officials in this land were able to paint the media a "high" incendiary
orange and the Democrats an "elevated" bright yellow, functionally sidelining
them.
How stunningly in recent weeks the landscape has altered -- almost like your
basic hurricane sweeping through some unprotected and unprepared city. Now, to
their amazement, Bush administration officials find themselves thrust through
the equivalent of a Star-Trekkian wormhole into an anti-universe where
everything that once worked for them seems to work against them. As always, in
the face of domestic challenge, they have responded by attacking -- a tactic
that was effective for years. The President, Vice President, National Security
Adviser, and others have ramped up their assaults, functionally accusing
Democratic critics of little short of treason -- of essentially undermining
American forces in the field, if not offering aid and comfort to the enemy. On
his recent trip to Asia, the President put it almost as bluntly as his Vice
President did at home: "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to
destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who
voted to send them into war continue to stand behind them." The! Democrats
were, he said over and over, "irresponsible" in their attacks. Dick Cheney
called them spineless "opportunists" peddling dishonestly for political
advantage.
But instead of watching the Democrats fall silent under assault as they have
for years, they unexpectedly found themselves facing a roiling oppositional
hubbub threatening the unity of their own congressional party. In his sudden,
heartfelt attack on Bush administration Iraq plans ("a flawed policy wrapped in
illusion") and his call for a six-month timetable for American troop
withdrawal, Democratic congressional hawk John Murtha took on the Republicans
over their attacks more directly than any mainstream Democrat has ever done.
("I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I
like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send
people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be
done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he [Bush] criticized Democrats for
criticizing them."! ) Perhaps more important, as an ex-Marine and decorated
Vietnam veteran clearly speaking for a military constituency (and possibility
some Pentagon brass), he gave far milder and more "liberal" Democrats cover.
For the first time since the war in Iraq began, "tipping points," constantly
announced in Iraq but never quite in sight, have headed for home. Dan Bartlett,
counselor to the President and drafter of recent Presidential attacks on the
Democrats, told David Sanger of the New York Times that "Bush's decision to
fight back. arose after he became concerned the [Iraq] debate was now at a
tipping point"; while Howard Fineman of Newsweek dubbed Murtha himself a
"one-man tipping point."
Something indeed did seem to tip, for when the White House and associates took
Murtha on, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats leaped aggressively to
his defense. In fact, something quite unimaginable even a few days earlier
occurred. When Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio, the most junior member of
the House, accused Murtha (via an unnamed Marine colonel supposedly from her
district) of being a coward, Democratic Representative Harold Ford from
Tennessee "charged across the chamber's center aisle to the Republican side
screaming that Ms. Schmidts's attack had been unwarranted. 'You guys are
pathetic!' yelled Representative Martin Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts.
'Pathetic.'"
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
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