Opinion - Editorials   

Mr. Bush's delusional world

With public opinion polls showing that the Republican Party is likely to lose control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November 2006, President George W. Bush is trying desperately to make terrorism the central theme of the political debate. The polls do suggest that terrorism is the one issue on which the Grand Old Party scores over the Democrats. Mr. Bush and his party won the presidential election of 2004 and the congressional election of 2002 mainly because a majority of voters believed they were more capable of ensuring security than their rivals. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. President has seized the fifth anniversary of 9/11 to take certain actions and deliver a series of speeches meant to showcase his campaign against terror. In transferring 14 men alleged to be key figures in the Al Qaeda network from secret detention centres run by the Central Intelligence Agency to the Guantanamo Bay military prison and challenging Congress to set the rules for their trial, Mr. Bush has sought to demonstrate that he remains committed to his objective while his opponents dither. According to the polls, however, Americans are far more concerned about the stagnant economy and the quagmire in Iraq than they are about terrorist attacks. What should really worry Mr. Bush and his party is the finding that over 70 per cent of the people polled are discontented with the state of the country.

It would not matter much to the rest of the world if this were just the case of a politician playing his strongest suit in desperate circumstances. However, it makes for a scary prospect when the `most powerful man in the world' deals in imagery that he apparently believes to be true but has little connection with reality. In acknowledging, however belatedly, that Saddam Hussein had no hand in 9/11, Mr. Bush might have made a concession to the blinding truth, but in his delusional world a group of `Islamic fascists' are trying to take over Iraq in order to establish a base from which attacks can be launched on free, democratic societies. The campaign against terror should have been a multi-pronged effort involving sound intelligence-gathering, effective interdiction, and going to the socio-economic and ideological roots of extremist violence. Instead, Mr. Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to invade a sovereign country that was itself fighting Al Qaeda. As a report released recently by the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals, the C.I.A told the President before the invasion that there was no evidence of a nexus between the Saddam Hussein regime and the jihadists. If Mr. Bush persists in the dogmatic belief that "after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take," he is either deliberately misleading his compatriots and allies or living in fantasyland. It is time America's voters elected a Congress capable of controlling the threat to international peace and security that President Bush and his policies represent.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Mr. Bush's delusional world
Pay more attention to mine safety
Ensuring security in the age of global terror
The U.S. and its fading alliance in East Asia
Corrections and clarifications
Wounds that have yet to heal
Backing away from the badlands?
On 9/11 & Gandhi
Malegaon blasts
Congratulations

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu