The Occasional Observer

SHK posted this on Thursday, but it got a little lost in the crush of post-election items. It's worth giving it (and its linked stories) another hard look. Elections are about the economy, stupid. Being CIC is about defending the country. And the task is daunting, especially given the tightrope that Obama's laid out for himself with his seemingly contradictory goals. -Fredo

While most readers of OccObs oppose the fiscal and social policies Obama will surely try to enact, that is not the real danger. I'm hopeful that economic realities will curtail how much he can really raise taxes and spending, but even if not I can still live with higher taxes. (I will bitterly fight it until the end, but it won't kill me.)

No, the real danger is--God forbid--another terrorist attack. But this can't happen now that Obama's in power and the world loves us, right?

Wrong, for several reasons, the primary one of which is that while the differences between McCain and Obama are stark to American eyes, they are in fact not very different to international eyes. Remember that the WTC car bombing, USS Cole, and extensive planning for 9/11 all occurred while Bill Clinton was in office. While we despised his policies, the fact is he was not viewed by terrorists as any friend to the Middle East. His presidency did nothing to reduce their hatred of what we stand for.

The same will be true of Obama. If he truly wants to free us from dependence on foreign oil, that directly kills the economy of Middle East countries. That will surely raise their ire. If he pursues Bin Laden in Pakistan, it will further irritate Pakistanis. In fact, Pakistanis have already been on record as saying they see little difference between McCain and Obama. If he refuses to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, he will also place us in their cross-hairs. All of these, by the way, are policies I wholly support and hope he will choose or at least be forced to enact. But the fact is that they are policies that will result in continued targets on our back.

The difficulty is that if you discontinue Bush's other policies, you are placing us at greater risk of attack. If you eliminate the wiretaps and aggressive interrogations, you are limiting our intelligence capabilities. If you withdraw from Iraq, you create a power vacuum that can be filled by terrorists. Even now the real advantage of Iraq is that it focuses the activity of terrorists overseas and against our greatest strength: our military. Without Iraq terrorists would be focused on attacking American civilians on our own soil.

So in my opinion the real danger that Obama potentially presents is how he handles our national security. I hope that his views are changed upon receiving his security briefings. And for those who doubt that there is still a threat, I suggest reading an excellent article by a Harvard JFK government prof just published in MIT Tech Review. In it, he makes a scary case for the possibility of a nuclear attack by terrorists on US soil.