The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [119]
America has become a nation consumed by anxiety, worried about terrorists and rogue nations, Muslims and Mexicans, foreign companies and free trade, immigrants and international organizations. The strongest nation in the history of the world now sees itself as besieged by forces beyond its control. While the Bush administration contributed mightily to this state of affairs, it is a phenomenon that goes beyond one president. Too many Americans have been taken in by a rhetoric of fear.
Republicans, in particular, resort to chest-thumping hysteria too often, especially when talking about Islamic terrorism. The former Massachusetts governor and presidential contender Mitt Romney, who bills himself as a smart, worldly manager, asked in 2005, “Are we monitoring [mosques]? Are we wiretapping?” The rhetoric got worse during the 2008 presidential campaign. “They hate you!” Rudy Giuliani repeatedly shouted on the campaign trail. He relentlessly reminded audiences of the nasty people out there. “They don’t want you to be in this college!” he warned a group of students at Oglethorpe University, in Atlanta. More recently, during the frenzy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich compared moderate Muslims trying to build a community center to one of history’s greatest villains. “There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center,” he told Fox News in August 2010. “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”
In his book Courage Matters, Senator John McCain took a far more sensible approach and wrote, “Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist. It’s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave.” Writing in late 2003, he added what seemed like a sound rule of thumb: “Watch the terrorist alert and when it falls below yellow, go outside again.” Unfortunately, since 9/11 the alert has never dropped below yellow (which means an “elevated” level of risk from a terrorist attack). At airports, it has been almost permanently at orange—“high risk,” the second-highest level of alertness. Yet the Department of Homeland Security admits that “there continues to be no credible information at this time warning of an imminent threat to the homeland.” Since 9/11, only a handful of minor or incompetent terrorist plots have been uncovered in the entire country, and there is no example of an Al Qaeda sleeper cell having been found in America.
And still, the enemy—as many American politicians describe it—is vast, global, and relentless. Giuliani, for instance, casually lumps together Iran and Al Qaeda. We are now repeating one of the central errors of the early Cold War—putting together all our potential adversaries, rather than dividing them. Mao and Stalin were both nasty. But they were nasties who disliked each other, a fact that could be exploited to the great benefit of the free world. To miss this is not strength. It’s stupidity.
Some praise the Bush administration’s aggressive approach for preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil after 9/11. Certainly, the administration does deserve credit for dismantling Al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Afghanistan and in other countries where it once had branches or supporters—though that success has been more limited than many recognize. But since 9/11 there have occurred terrorist attacks in countries like Britain, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia—most of which are also very tough on terrorism. The common thread in these attacks is that they were launched by local groups. It’s easier to spot and stop foreign agents, far more difficult to detect a group of locals.
The crucial advantage that the United States has in this regard is that it does not have a radicalized domestic population. American Muslims are generally middle class, moderate, and