Where the Battle of Algiers rages on ...Rick's Cafe Americain

I, for one, believe that the image was designed precisely to echo the 9/11 image.  Nothing else makes sense (I’ll reconsider if someone tells me that an important moment in the Bush/Cheney campaign was marked by a crowd full of people wearing red).  The bigger question is, does it work?

There’s no doubt that one of the primary—hell, the primary—weapons in the Bush/Cheney/Rove arsenal is fear.  Fear of being attacked, fear of being arrested or harassed, fear of being labeled anti-American, fear of the French, etc.  But do they really want people associating Bush/Cheney with 9/11?

The answer, apparently, is yes.  And they’re probably right.  Although “knee-jerk” is a term traditionally reserved for the liberals among us, it describes (with only marginally appropriate synecdoche to goose-stepping) Bush’s core market (yes, market.  Remember “you don’t launch a new product in August"?) quite well.  The liberal media has so effectively assaulted the TV-addled people of this country with Administration talking points that staggering numbers of people believed—and probably still believe—that there was a Saddam-9/11 connection.  Similarly, the Bush campaign has been force-feeding the American people the pablum that only Bush is “man enough” to protect our country against another 9/11.

Forget the fact that the Bush Administration willfully ignored the threat prior to 9/11.  Forget the fact that Bush’s actions in the wake of 9/11 have arguably increased the danger to the American people by orders of magnitude.  Forget that Osama has not been caught, that the majority of al-Qaeda arrests have been by countries other than the US (the ones Kerry is ridiculed for wanting to cooperate with), that the men and women who could be protecting us here and abroad are being sent to Iraq, to say nothing of the money that could have been spent on national security, or healthcare, or education or . . . well, you get my point.  A point most succinctly made, perhaps, by Scout’s post immediately preceding the one about the banner ad, which points out that in May of 2001 John Kerry identified terrorists and “non-state actors” as the number one threat to this country, while Bush said it was “ballistic missiles”.  Oh, and Saddam Hussein, right?

Forget, in essence, that Bush has been as bad—or worse—on national security as he as been on virtually every major issue with which he has been faced in his presidency.  Nonetheless, a large number of Americans has been conditioned to believe that 9/11 was Bush’s “defining moment”, and that—literally—we should thank God there wasn’t a wimp like Kerry in the White House.

Sadly, it is not about issues, about policy, about leadership, about fitness, about character, about qualification, intelligence, aptitude, inclination, bias, motive, or even about who is more likeable.  It has become, at base, about manipulation.  And because John Kerry and his people will not sink to the Nixonian depths from which the Bush Administration routinely dives (I wouldn’t vote for him if he/they did), Bush might actually win re-election.

If he does, the “I told you so” four years from now just isn’t going to be worth it.