It was frequently argued that the last administration manipulated American fears in order to gain control of oil fields in Iraq, that TERRORISM was just a tool to further the aims of Big Oil, &c. Blah blah blah. Looking back, all the screaming by leftists seems pretty juvenile. Bush came from oil country, and Cheney had at one time worked for Haliburton, but that didn't make them into villains conspiring against America for financial gain.
In contrast, Obama's administration is showing some early signs of manipulating fear for overtly political ends, namely the de-legitimization and stigmatization of conservative political thought. It's not difficult mental gymnastics, even. For someone who can see the label "freedom fighter" lurking behind the flashing neon sign reading "terrorist", it's child's play to see terrorism beginning to foam within the ranks of veterans, tax-protesters, and even "right-wingers" broadly construed.
Which is exactly what Janet Napolitano recently did with her Department of Homeland Security assessment (thanks to Michelle Malkin for posting the pdf). Now why, in heaven's name, would a bureaucrat think right-wing American groups are so dangerous, especially since the administration evidently doesn't think foreign terrorists are such a big deal any more (thus releasing the internal information on our advanced techniques for squeezing intelligence out of high-level terror operatives)?
I think it boils down to two basic left-wing political assumptions:
1. Terrorism is primarily a reaction to the misuse of American power in the world.
2. The largest and most important struggle in the world is between the "haves" and the "have nots."
"Right wingers", for the left-wing thinker, represent the "haves" who oppress the "have nots" (either knowingly or unknowingly). They represent the privileged few who ought to be brought down a bit so that the underprivileged many can be brought up a bit. So if we just look at the problem through the left lens of our spectacles here, we can see that "right wingers" are dangerous opponents to progress and terrorists are just acting out their economic frustrations in irrationally violent ways.
Now in my (admittedly right-wing) view, this is plain silly. There is no question that there are a few nuts in America who do really nasty things--we often hear about Timothy McVeigh at times like this--but there really is no broad based conspiracy against America from the American "right". International terrorism is a much more clear danger.
Which brings us back to the release of the release of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos. It's a bad policy choice, and one that will have a deleterious effect on future intelligence efforts against our ever-evolving terrorist enemies. Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey make the point well:
The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.
They go on to address the many misperceptions and rebut the usual arguments against the interrogation techniques before concluding with an explanation of how the creation of "institutional timidity" has weakened intelligence in the past:
In his book "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith describes the phenomenon we are now experiencing, and its inevitable effect, referring to what he calls "cycles of timidity and aggression" that have weakened intelligence gathering in the past. Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity. He calls these cycles "a terrible problem for our national security." Indeed they are, and the precipitous release of these OLC opinions simply makes the problem worse.
Oh well, at least they're watching those really scary conservatives in America. After all, those right-wingers seriously cloud up our 'bright, sunny, safe' April days... The inversion of reason is incredible--unless, of course, the policy here is purely a consolidation of political power at the expense of American security. Here's to the politics of fear.
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ps: This little blog will be unusually quiet next week as I'm off for a little Katrina relief work on the Gulf Coast. I'll be back at it on the 27th.
