Frank Rich Best-Ever Column: 'The era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over...'

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/19/06 at 11:44pm

Snippets:

===

Op-Ed Columnist

Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out

By FRANK RICH
Published: August 20, 2006

THE results are in for the White House’s latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans’ fearing fear itself is over. ...

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat -- though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair's vacation -- is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn't stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday's talk shows. "It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out," he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Chertoff and still see the man who couldn't figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television....

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician’s opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn’t easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman’s loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont’s victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont’s pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11. ...

These commentators are no more adept at reading the long-term implications of the Connecticut primary than they were at seeing through blatant White House propaganda about Saddam’s mushroom clouds. Their generalizations about the blogosphere are overheated; the shrillest left-wing voices on the Internet are no more representative of the whole than those of the far right. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and (if you listen to Chuck Hagel and George Will, among other non-neoconservatives) even the center right.

As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It’s hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who’ve presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.




Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out

[DG]

Posted: 8/19/06 at 11:48pm

And to think he used to be 'just' a theatre critic.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 1:32am

I hope it's true and that America has figured out the scare tactics used by this disgraceful administration. I worry that Americans will somehow either not bother to vote again or stick with the idiots who got us in the mess we are in now (Republican majority).

[DG]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 1:34am

It's a valid worry, Jim - history does not give one comfort

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 8:27am

I'm hopeful. I think America is waking up.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 7:01pm

Came home to find a lot of politics on the board tonight. I prefer Frank's take.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 11:34pm

Bump for SweetQ

[BroadwayRandy0711]

Posted: 8/20/06 at 11:40pm

I believe that American's are waking up. We have gotten rid of one corrupt politician, ie, Tom DeLay from my home state of Texas. Not proud to admit that I am a Texan with George W. coming from here and Tom DeLay and the current idiot Rick Perry as our Governor. I am sure that there are more moronic Republicans out there. But there are a few good ones as well. Hence the word few - the more moderate ones.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/21/06 at 8:25am

That's the spirit!