Bin Laden and the U.S. Elections

Salameh Nematt     Al-Hayat     2003/09/11

The personal attack being waged by the Democrat candidates against President George Bush reflects a political failure as far as developing a realistic policy regarding the American involvement in Iraq and national security following the September 11 attacks. Indeed, none of the nine candidates who met in a TV debate two days ago opposed the U.S. President's request from Congress to dedicate $87 billion to finance Iraq's occupation and its reconstruction. What does this mean in case one of the Democrat candidates wins in the upcoming elections? It means, among other things, that the Democrat 'opposition' to war in Iraq won't guarantee an American withdrawal. Rather, the consent on financing the occupation and the reconstruction of Iraq are strong indications that there will be no substantial change in the U.S. policy in the region, at least until the strategic goal of the war is achieved.   

Howard Dean, the luckiest candidate in the primary elections for the Democrat Party, announced that in case he wins the presidential elections against Bush, he will work on replacing half the American forces currently based in Iraq with international forces, and insisted on the need to fulfill the mission which the American forces went for. As for Joe Lieberman, he said that in case he was elected, he was going to send additional forces to Iraq, if needed, in order to guarantee the success of the American project. Opinion polls show that the American public opinion links the former Iraqi regime to the international terrorism targeting the Americans, which means that it supports completing the mission as way of eradicating terrorism. One of the polls showed that two thirds of the Americans believe that the toppled Iraqi regime is involved in the September 11 attacks. This connection, despite the fact that it is unsubstantiated, confirms that the Republican administration was more successful in influencing the public opinion than the Democrat rivals regarding national security, a fact that boosts the chances of Bush's reelection. This also means that there is no chance for the Democrats to win in the presidential elections by using foreign policy and national security as a basis to undermine the credibility of the Republican administration, the which means that the economy will be the main issue in the electoral campaign.

It is worthy noting that the Democrat candidates, and mainly Howard Dean, are now forced to move away from the political left towards the middle right, in accordance with the changes in the American public opinion after the September attacks. Analysts expect this tendency to increase after the primary elections of the party's leadership, because the winning Democrat candidate will be the one who will have taken into account the stance of all American voters, and not only the Democrats, in order to have a chance against Bush.

With regards to the Middle East, this means that the general U.S. policy in the region won't be operating a major change, regardless of the presidential elections' results. Most American voters won't risk electing a candidate who could be lenient with national security issues, as long as there is no convincing alternative to the preemptive strike policy adopted by the current administration. The change in American public opinion following September 11 is to a great extent comparable to that operated in the Israeli public opinion, which pushed Binyamin Netanyahu to power following the series of suicide operations that preceded the elections in 1996. If the U.S. comes under an attack that is similar to that of September, then this will guarantee that the liberal trend won't be able to rise after the severe strikes it suffered during the past two years.

The difference between the change in Israel and that in America is that the move of the American public opinion towards the right will have an universal impact, whereas the impact of the change in Israel remains confined at the regional level.

Over the past two years, the world has witnessed the results of what Osama bin Laden did.