Once again conservatives will attempt to make national security the primary campaign issue, knowing that for John McCain to win they must convince enough voters they are safer with a Republican remaining in the White House.

McCain will need to further embrace the policies of George W. Bush's "war on terror", including the War in Iraq, "The Surge", "enhanced" interrogation techniques and domestic spying. He will say that these are working because we have not been attacked again since September 11, 2001.

The liberal counter to this flimsy claim should be clear and strong.

True, the United States itself has not been attacked again. But that's where the good news stops. Other nations, including Great Britain, Spain, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco have taken their turn being attacked by Al Qaeda linked terrorists. That's not to even mention the blood-drenched triumvirate of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda has hardly been idle.

Meanwhile, the notion that half-funded Republican attempts to shore up "homeland security", though certainly inconvenient to law-abiding citizens (and dubiously constitutional), have served to thwart Al Qaeda in any consistent manner is simply laughable. With hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants streaming across the border, and any teenager able to make headlines with an AK-47 at any time, it is sheer fantasy to assume that Al Qaeda couldn't stage an attack every week… if they wanted!

So why aren't they? Simply, Al Qaeda doesn't need to attack the U.S.

Consider:

Did not Al Qaeda claim that one of their primary motivations for the attacks of 9/11 was retribution for American military presence in the Islamic Holy Land, Saudi Arabia? Yet hardly anyone seems to recall that in 2003, with prompting from the Saudis (and under the cover of the Iraq invasion), Bush quietly closed all American bases in Saudi Arabia. Hmmm. Seems the terrorists got what they wanted.

Al Qaeda is absolutely thrilled with how Bush has responded to 9/11, and therefore has no desire to divert his wholly counter-productive strategy. Think how Bush's policies have answered so many of the terrorists' prayers:

The terrorists are certainly thankful for how Bush-Cheney et al completely ignored warnings of an impending Al Qaeda attack through the summer of 2001. Then, in early 2002, they sat in amazement as the Americans diverted their attention and resources from the hunt in Afghanistan to invasion of Iraq. The terrorists dared not imagine that Bush could so quickly transform world opinion toward the U.S. from empathy and solidarity to frustration, alienation, disrespect and outright animosity. The terrorists were gleeful as Bush sent soldiers into a warfare setting where America's overwhelming military advantage would be neutralized and they could be picked off one-by-one ---nearly 4,000 so far---by a handful of terrorist operatives, with the welcome assistance of non-terrorist Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites who previously posed no threat. Could the terrorists have believed that their 19 martyrs with box-cutters could not only bring down the twin towers but also prompt the over reactive American tactics that would actually wear out its military?

The terrorists are elated that the U.S. would voluntarily bankrupt its treasury to chase ghosts in Iraq, and they are not unaware of how Bush/McCain policies have left the U.S. economy gasping, helped oil prices to soar and the dollar to plummet, all of which aided and abetted the terrorists.

The Bush/McCain war on terror strategy has played right into the hands of the terrorists. It has been nothing short of a catastrophe. So why attack America again, when America is doing such a great job of ruining itself?

Today Al Qaeda and the Taliban are resurgent. Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants are still on the loose. The U.S. is stuck like a mastodon in the tar pits of Iraq, with no end in sight. The war on terror has made no discernible progress, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended. But the Republicans say their tactics are working - because we haven't been attacked again -- and ask for a continuance from the American voters.

The Democrats should take this screwball Republican argument and blast it over the right field fence!

-- Rusticus