Jihad Jane’ and the politics of fear

Sean Collins
‘from ‘keeping America safe’, the elite’s depiction of the US as fragile and at-risk makes even lonely weirdos seem like a deadly threat.
An advert produced by the group Keep America Safe, led by Liz Cheney (daughter of former vice-president Dick), recently caused howls of protest. The video demanded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) release the names of the officials who served as pro bono defence lawyers for the Guantanamo Bay detainees, who were labelled ‘the Al-Qaeda Seven’.
Somewhat unexpectedly, conservatives joined liberals in denouncing Keep America Safe’s attacks on the DOJ lawyers. A group of lawyers and policy experts, including Kenneth Starr (the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky) and officials who served in Republican administrations from Reagan to George W Bush, called the advert ‘shameful’. In defending the seven DOJ lawyers, they noted that ‘the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre’. Even some of the most ardent defenders of the Bush-Cheney war on terror had to concede that the advert was ‘unfortunate’.
Because of the bipartisan condemnation, the Obama administration, and attorney general Eric Holder in particular, can easily brush the advert aside. The reaction to the video reveals just how isolated the former Republican hardliners associated with Cheney have become. Even the Tea Party movement, currently dominating talk on the right, treats the anti-terror policies associated with the Bush administration with suspicion at best.
Yet the routing of the Cheneys in this case does not mean that the broader Republican effort to mark the Democrats as soft on terror will be as readily dismissed. The conservative line may gain traction, but not because, as Frank Rich argued in the New York Times, the US is an ‘amnesia-prone nation’ that is likely to forget that it was the Bush regime that failed to ‘keep America safe’ under its watch. Rather, the Republican message may take hold because Obama and the Democrats continue to respond defensively to charges that they put the rights of terrorists ahead of the country’s security.
From maintaining the Guantanamo facility to continuing the use of military commissions to try terror suspects, Obama has conceded national security positions associated with Bush and Cheney. When questioned about reading so-called ‘Miranda rights’ to the Christmas Day ‘underpants bomber’, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Obama argued that this was Bush’s approach to would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid – thus endorsing the prior administration as the prime authority on the subject. As Glenn Greenwald rightly notes, Obama ‘can’t stand on his own two feet and forcefully justify civilian trials or Mirandising terrorist suspects; he has to take refuge in the fact that Bush also did it – as though that proves it’s the right thing to do, because Bush/Cheney is the standard-bearer of Toughness on Terrorism.’
Despite the unpopularity of the Bush regime, the election of Obama has not dislodged a basic impression of the two parties. The Republicans are supposed to be the tough guys, willing to do what it takes to protect American lives. Like Jack Bauer on the TV show 24, they are not going to let a few laws get in way of fighting war. Likewise, Democrats are portrayed as weak and wavering. A recent report from Democratic Party pollsters says ‘there is evidence of rising public concern about the president’s handling’ of national security issues, and that Republican gains, by depicting the administration as lenient on terrorists, should be ‘a wake-up call to President Obama, his party, and progressives’.
But this ‘Republicans strong, Democrats weak’ discussion obscures a more fundamental consensus between the two parties. Both establish anti-terror polices on the premise that the country is vulnerable and at risk. And both therefore overplay the threat posed by possible terror attacks.