\n| \n Considering the nearly constant warnings of the near certainty of a major terrorist attack this summer, dire declarations that Al Queda is
\n determined
\n to
\n upset or influence the US elections with an attack, and that the infamous
\n "chatter" is pointing to an attack launched inside the US using non-Arab
\n looking individuals, as well as the undeniable fact that major terrorist
\n attacks seem to occur approximately every three years, it is passing
\n curious that more speculation has not been forthcoming as to the probable
\n political fallout from such a seemingly inevitable occurrence.<\/p>\n Of course, it is a horrible thing to anticipate, and we all pray that
\n a repetition or variation of 9\/11 can somehow be avoided, but the lack
\n of discussion on the topic of the political effects of an attack strikes
\n us as a sort of whistling by the graveyard, as though we are passing
\n through
\n a bout
\n of
\n national
\n denial,
\n refusing
\n to imagine the unimaginable.<\/p>\n First, in the name of full disclosure, we should mention that any kind
\n of serious terrorist attack within the United States would have an immediate
\n and disastrous effect on our employment status. As a Senior Lecturer
\n at a major private American university, we have absolutely no job security,
\n and are currently working our way through our 15th consecutive one-year
\n academic
\n year (9 month) contract. We can be discarded without recourse or separation
\n benefits at any point in time.<\/p>\n Furthermore, as a specialist in Teaching English as a Second Language,
\n the poor step-sister of higher education English instruction, our students
\n are all foreigners here on student visas, to take advantage of the
\n world’s premier university system. Since 9\/11 our enrollment has fallen
\n by more
\n than half, and has only recently started to stabilize, and in some programs
\n even inch upward. Of the 43 full-time lecturers in our Center during
\n the Fall ’01 semester, only 21 remain. The rest were laid off on
\n a strict seniority basis. At present, the Dowbrigade, with 15
\n years of full-time service, is 21st on the seniority list. Meaning that
\n if
\n we lose any more students, a virtual certainty should there be another
\n attack, we will be unceremoniously shown the door.<\/p>\n Politically, for the past 6 months, since it became clear that the
\n Democratic Party was in the process of uniting behind John Kerry in a
\n desperate attempt to dethrone the Bush regime at all costs, we have had
\n a growing conviction that the tide had turned, time had run out on the
\n administration’s attempt to fool all of the people all of the time, and
\n the only thing that could save the ideologically bankrupt Bush team was
\n a serious
\n terrorist
\n attack
\n during
\n the run up to
\n the election.<\/p>\n The reasoning was simple. Historically, the nation bands together behind
\n the sitting President, regardless of their agreement or disagreement
\n with his domestic and foreign policy, at moments that the country itself
\n is under attack. Bush’s popularity peaked after the attack on the
\n Twin Towers, and spiked up again when our armed forces busted into Iraq
\n and rolled up what passed for conventional armed forces in the chaotic
\n pseudo state of Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n But the conventional battle, which the world-class PR masterminds in
\n Washington could framed in historical, patriotic martial crepe, was
\n over too soon. The
\n messy war of occupation and attrition which followed is increasingly
\n difficult
\n to package as
\n a glorious
\n demonstration of American righteous armed heroism. The conventional war
\n had ended too soon, and there are no likely geopolitical candidates
\n for a new campaign which could be brought on-line in the short few months
\n before
\n the election.<\/p>\n So the only possible scenario to rekindle the insatiable thirst for
\n revenge and macho machination Bush needs to put him over the top would
\n be a terrorist
\n strike on the homeland.<\/p>\n Now, however, the situation has subtly shifted. Bush is hanging
\n his campaign on the only marginally supportable sense in which Americans
\n can be convinced that they have been directly and positively affected
\n in their daily lives by the whole war apparatus the administration has
\n ponderously
\n assembled. According
\n to Bush, the United States is more secure today thanks to his War on
\n Terrorism,
\n the Invasion of Iraq, the installation of a puppet regime in Afghanistan,
\n the sacrifice of personal liberty to the nefarious Patriot Act, the
\n creation of the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, and the continual
\n feeding of the low-level paranoia which has become the status quo in
\n our country.<\/p>\n And every day, every week, every prime opportunity (4th of July, the
\n Superbowl, G8 meetings, etc.) that goes by without an incident, the Bush
\n argument gains weight. Hey, it’s been three years, and they haven’t
\n hit us again. Maybe all this Homeland Security stuff is really
\n working!<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Democrats have been maneuvered into the awkward position
\n of having to argue that because the Bush strategy is misdirected at best,
\n criminally corrupt at worst, we are indeed LESS safe than we were before
\n 9\/11. In the absence of an attack, this position becomes harder
\n and harder to sustain. As the election approaches, we believe Bush
\n will benefit from a subconscious but powerful common sense stubbornness;
\n if it ain’t obviously broke, don’t mess with it. If we keep avoiding
\n the next blow, maybe we should stay the current course.<\/p>\n Seen from this point of view, an attack in the next few months could,
\n perversely, help the Democrats. It would be obvious that the Bush approach
\n is NOT working, and we are if anything more vulnerable than before. <\/p>\n Of course, all of this speculation cannot help us decide the best approach
\n to take, either to influence the outcome of the presidential election
\n or to avoid another attack. The Bush people are engaged in a desperate
\n gamble to
\n scare
\n the US population into supporting their aggressive moves to somehow defeat
\n an unseen and ephemeral enemy. The only conclusion clear to the Dowbrigade,
\n at this stage of the game, is that the outcome of the election will depend
\n on what happens, not in the convention halls or the news organizations,
\n but on the streets and in the skies of America. Or maybe, by what
\n doesn’t happen.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Considering the nearly constant warnings of the near certainty of a major terrorist attack this summer, dire declarations that Al Queda is determined to upset or influence the US elections with an attack, and that the infamous "chatter" is pointing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |