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The bin Laden Effect

Submitted by Ken Watts on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 12:03

THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

So here's a little history lesson for us, as voters, lest we repeat a past mistake.

When George W. Bush came into office, he surrounded himself with a group of neocons, who wanted to turn the United States into a world empire.

They had not been secretive about this plan, or about the fact that one step in it was for the U.S. to invade Iraq. They had even said, in publicly accessible documents, that there was a need for a "Pearl Harbor" type event, which could be twisted to sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people.

Bin Laden didn't have to use a spy apparatus, or any form of genius, to figure this out. It was public knowledge for anyone who cared to look.

Bin Laden wanted, at that time, to position himself as a powerful figure in the Middle East. He also wanted to de-stabilize the area, in order to further his ability to recruit and train terrorists. And Saddam, a major force in the region, wouldn't trust him.

What better move than to

  1. attack the powerful United States, thus making himself a romantic figure taking on a giant Goliath,
  2. give the neocons their "Pearl Harbor" and entice them into Iraq, where they would
  3. take care of Saddam, and
  4. create the kind of chaos in the region that he needed for his future plans?

It worked.

And then, an election came along. It looked like Kerry might win, cooler heads might prevail, and bin Laden's plan might fall apart.

Fortunately for him, all he had to do was listen to U.S. television to know that Americans have a tendency to vote Republican when they think they're at war.

This is an odd attitude, considering the score for the twentieth century:

Democratic presidents—Wars won: 3, Wars lost or unresolved: 0

Republican presidents—Wars won: 1, Wars lost or unresolved: 2

However, we do seem to vote that way, and it is common knowledge that we do.

So, four days before that election, bin Laden did the obvious: he aired a video threatening the American people, hoping to push them into the Bush camp, to keep his beloved neo-cons in power.

And we fell for it. Bush immediately gained a six point lead in the polls.

Bin Laden got four more years of ineffectual Republican rule—which continued to turn more of the world against us, wasted our economy on an expensive war, and utterly failed to apprehend or kill bin Laden.

He looked smarter every passing day.

But now it looks very much like the American people are waking up.

We show every sign of electing Barack Obama, a man who refused, back when the position was unpopular, to take Bin Laden's bait.

Barack has the skill and the temperament and the good sense to rebuild our economy, to rebuild our reputation in the world, and to keep his eye on the ball—which means going after the guy who actually attacked us.

What do you think bin Laden is likely to do?

The answer, of course, depends on how smart he really is, and on how stupid he thinks we are.

But make no mistake—his goals haven't changed. He wants the next eight years to be as much like the last eight as possible.

If he believes it will take another video tape, he'll do it. If he believes it will take another attack, he'll try. If he thinks we're too smart for either of those this time, he'll do something else. But unless he's too sick to care, expect something .

The McCain campaign knows this. Their adviser, Charlie Black, said last June that a terrorist event would "be a big advantage" for McCain. He was reprimanded at the time, but everyone knew it was true.

The McCain campaign isn't stupid.

I'm sure they don't hope for terrorist activity of any kind, but they know it's possible, and they're prepared.

They've spent enormous time and effort inventing links between Barack Obama and "terrorists", even when the strategy seemed to be backfiring.

Even now, after reprimanding people at his rallies for going too far, after stating publicly that Barack Obama would be a safe president, McCain is putting out telephone ads that continue these dishonest allegations.

If bin Laden does release another video, or, heaven forbid, attempt another attack, those efforts will pay off with the most gullible of voters.

But let's hope most of us aren't that gullible.

Let's hope the American people can recognize that anything bin Laden does, he will do in order to achieve his own ends.

And Barack Obama is his worst nightmare.