The Repubican Party in my lifetime has routinely touted itself as tougher and more competent than its Democratic competitor in matters of foreign policy. From the (false) claim that President Reagan won the Cold War via his military build-up and unwillingness to compromise on Star Wars (false because the build-up began in his predecessor's administration and was only marginally increased in his own, because Star Wars was ignored by the Soviets once Gorbachev was convinced that it was chimerical, and because the Cold War ended only after Reagan reversed his years of neo-con rhetoric to sign back on to the bipartisan policy of arms reduction that untimately allowed Gorbachev to sell internal reform to his own generals), to the beating Dukakis took over that goofy Alfred E Newman picture of him in the tank, the drumbeat of criticism that Clinton was weak on terrorism (when in fact he did more and came closer to beating our adversaries than the current administration), and the manic refrain of the current set of GOP candidates that they can be counted on to stay in Iraq and/or bomb the Persians into a no-nuke Iran, the party of Lincoln in its decidedly post-Lincoln phase has never ceased to remind voters of its claimed toughness.
Unfortunately, however, in the war on terror, this testosterone politics is not only shallow, it is positively dangerous. At the outset, certain facts cannot be disputed. They are these. Neither Iran (with an economy roughly the size of Connecticut), Al Qaeda (a remnant in Afghanistan and a marketing arm with some IEDs in Iraq), Syria (with an economy smaller than Iran's), Hamas and Hezbollah (political operations with guns) or the leftover Afghani Taliban (now holed up in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan) can beat the United States militarily, economically, culturally or politically. In fact, the war on terror against these various "enemies" is not really lose-able, at least not in the sense that our enemies have any realistic chance of winning as a consequence of their own initiative. They simply do not have the military or financial wherewithal to mount an effective campaign, nor can they obtain effective power (i.e., durable control) in any particular region of the world. The ease with which the Afghani Taliban was routed demonstrated as much, as does the inability of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah to actually govern the areas where their writ (legal or de facto) runs. Thus, wherever they rule or even pretend to effective power, the hold exercised by these groups is unsteady at best and often transitory, roughly the equivalent of a gang's ability to "control" an extended urban neighborhood in America. So, in fact, they can't beat us. (Repeat that to yourself every time you hear someone mention the war on terror as the consuming generational struggle of our time; it'll make going to work, taking out the garbage, and sundry other mundanae tasks seem much less dangerous than they might otherwise appear.)
The Administration accepts this "they can't beat us" reality, but responds by claiming "we can beat ourselves". And the Administration is right. But not for the reasons it thinks. And therein hangs the tale.
The terrorists know they cannot beat us militarily, but they do believe they can win a psychiological war. And in that effort, they have a not so secret weapon. That weapon is fear, and at this point its best delivery system is Rudy Guiliani. In his campaign for the Presidency, as Joe Biden has aptly noted, Guiliani's sentences contain three things -- a noun, a verb, and the word "9/11". Under his watch, we will (1) be in Iraq until whenever, (2) go to war with and/or inititate a non-stop bombing campaign against Iran, (3) forever troll the domestic and international communications networks without warrants, (4) continue to illegally hold detainees at Guantanamo, and (5) torture those we think have information while denying we do so with double-talk. Indeed, though a lawyer by training and well publicized professional experience, Guiliani (along with his cohorts, with the notable, courageous, and useful exception of Sen. McCain, who happens to be the only Presidential candidate in either party who actually has been tortured) has baldly pretended that he cannot categorically preclude waterboarding because he does not know the specific circumstances in which it has been or will be used or the precise details of the actual technique. As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecutor Guiliani routinely laughed at defendants who made similar claims about the nature of racketeering in an effort to avoid prosecution. As a candidate, it is now the height of mendacity that he recurs to such falsehoods in his non-stop effort to sound tough. (Memo to Rudy: waterboarding has been illegal for decades, much like loansharking, murder, theft and a host of other crimes that you regularly prosecuted during your stints at the Justice Department and in New York.)
Only the terrorists are cheering (and the 30% who still think W is a good President, but for a different reason). The terrorists know that a President Guiliani will replace FDR's famous nostrum -- "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" -- with the reality that "our only policy is fear itself". And they also know that the consequences will be precisely those Franklin Roosevelt warned against -- an irrational hatred that saps our energy for any productive enterprise, a series of mindless but expensive and largely ineffective escalations against third rate nuisances, the alienation of our friends, and a pyschological xenophobia that walls off the larger world as it locates recurrent threats of 9/11 in anyone who disagrees.
FDR and Harry Truman taught us that it is entirely possbile to fight an enemy without becoming the enemy or sacrificing the freedoms that make America what it is. FDR did it in World War II and Truman gave us the game plan of containment that led to the successful conclusion of the Cold War (and the demise of Communism) decades later. All this, moreoever, was done without repealing the bill of rights; in fact, it was done while the nation began to redeem its promise of equal rights to minorities and women, and while it educated a new class of ex-GIs who themselves gave a fuller meaning to Jefferson's "pursuit of happiness" as they created a large, vital and vibrant middle class. Guiliani is a child of that progress. Shame on him for not respecting the values that made it possible, even (indeed especially) in the face of the the then global threats that made it by no means certain.
The terrorists do not have to launch a nuke or deploy a chemical or biological weapon to win their war. They just have to root for Guiliani. And my bet is that this is what they are doing.
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