By the Sword
Years from now, it is unlikely that anyone other than people like me (re: people with a professional interest in terrorism) will care much about this example of backfired fear-mongering, but I think it is incredibly salient to the Right’s totally ridiculous assertions about how Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist. McCain and Palin raise the specter of terrorism in relation to Barack Obama and now people at their rallies, showing that they have fully bought every email that’s been forwarded to them, think he’s a one man sleeper cell.
The fear of terrorism is raised on what is little else than old racist fears – you can’t implore people to be afraid of a black guy anymore, so the terrorism thing will have to do – and the message that the Right digests becomes that, outside of Barack Obama not wanting to automatically bomb the Middle East to a sheet of glass (which is code for wanting to hug terrorists), he may actually be a terrorist, or in league with them, or ready to welcome them to the White House.
You don’t have to know much about terrorism to know how stupid that is. It is utterly stone dumb. But knowing a little bit about terrorism might bring you the knowledge that the primary battleground in the war on terror is financial. You have to have money to do everything, and in a world where intelligence agencies and law enforcement are usually forced to defend against the last terrorist attack, organizations like the US Treasury do a great deal to stop terrorism before it happens by disrupting terrorist finances. A student of basic history without any special terrorism knowledge would know that the mujahideen in Afghanistan, with some logistical support from the United States, defeated the Soviet Union by fighting an unwinnable, asymmetrical land war that drained the considerable resources of the Soviets and mired them in a conflict from which there was no readily acceptable excision.
Thus it is no surprise that Al-Qaeda supporters using community website forums – the terrorist communication method of choice these days – would express glee at the financial problems the United States is currently experiencing. It is unlikely that Osama bin Laden blogs there under the pen name 3m1r_31057 or something, but these are used as readily as bookstores and radical mosques are as conduits of information, communication, and message control by the modern al-Qaeda network.
It is also no surprise to me that supporters of militant Islamic transnational terrorism against the United States would be excited about the prospect of a John McCain presidency. He’s determined to “win” in Iraq, an outcome with no definable parameters or possible tangible results, and I see no reason to expect McCain to act any differently towards the Middle East than George Bush has. Understanding that, the War in Iraq has been the single greatest recruiting tool that terrorism has ever enjoyed. A continuation of Bush’s policies and the Bush Doctrine as the United States deals with an enormous economic crisis and continues to isolate itself with unilateral foreign policy aggression would no doubt aid the cause of al-Qaeda and the many, many umbrella organizations that function as its wholly owned subsidiaries.
So, in the long run, something like this is probably inconsequential, some chatter among extremists that made it out into the mainstream for consumption. But it is indicative of a totally predictable reception and attitude, a rational approach to American politics by rational actors who also happen to be militant extremists that claim membership in a transnational terrorist organization that makes war on our country. Further foolish military misadventure is a desirable outcome for the enemies of America, and the fact that no one on the left has made this point – ever – on the national scene drives me up the wall.
Not only is the hyper-amped terrorism fear-mongering about Obama totally false and completely unfounded, it also makes no logical sense when applied to the real world, even when you take the stuff about the Manchurian Candidate out of it and you’re only left with a military intention that doesn’t include knocking chips off of shoulders for no good reason, it is also totally misdirected. True fear about terrorism should spring from the prospect of a continuation of the policies of the last 8 years, not from a change in direction about how we conduct ourselves in the world. We should, as a nation, not only be working to prevent the next terror attack and punish those who perpetrated the last one. We should also be working to stop terrorism 5 or 10 or 20 years before it happens.
