The surveillance information in question, which was discovered recently in Pakistan, apparently was several years old but had been updated as recently as January, according to White House security officials. Given al-Qaida?s modus operandi, which is to gather information over a long period and update it shortly before an attack, was Bush wrong to issue an alert?
Ridge explained Tuesday that the combination of recent chatter and the specific nature of the recently discovered data convinced him that an alert was justified. ?We don?t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,? Ridge said. ?Our job is to identify the threat.?
To whatever degree the information is old or new, reliable or misleading, it seems that Bush is damned if he does, damned if he doesn?t.
If, for instance, there were a terrorist threat and Bush said/did nothing, critics would damn him as they did following the Sept. 11 attacks for not connecting the dots. Or, if Bush issued a terrorist warning as he did this week and nothing happened, they?d damn him again for manufacturing fear for political gain, as they have done.
And yet what would be a reasonable alternative? And where does such cynicism lead? To a Kerry-Edwards victory in November? Then what? Do we trust terror warnings under a new administration? Do we cease to have terror threats because al-Qaida will have succeeded in its mission of derailing Bush? Are we safer then?
Logic gets lost amid such cynicism and paranoia. Except in the twisted logic of the bitterly partisan, there is no reason for Bush to fake terrorist threats, especially against financial institutions when he needs economic growth and stability for re-election. No real-world benefit accrues to him from threats that could shake market confidence.
What is nearly as frightening as terrorist chatter is the degree of cynicism that makes the war on terror political. As we count down the weeks to the November election, each political party attacking the other, the terrorist sets his clock by eternity, patiently biding time for his window, which some seem willing to leave open.
In the arsenal of terror, surely the cheapest and most effective weapon is our own self-defeating cynicism.