THE IMAGE of President George W. Bush emerging as a strong wartime leader after the Sept. 11 attacks remains an integral part of the self-image of the Republican Party. This image also remains a lightning-rod for partisan conflict, with the political parties seemingly offering sharply differing stands on foreign policy issues.
This conflict lurked in the background as Dr. James Robbins, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University, which is affiliated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lectured on the War on Terror at Newcomb Hall last Tuesday in an event sponsored by the University's Student Fellows of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Robbins' thesis on our current foreign policy situation will be familiar to consumers of right-wing media or listeners of President Bush: The United States is locked in a clash of value systems with the Middle East against those who hate uniquely American liberty and freedom. However, the terrorists miscalculated with Sept. 11, and the Unites States is currently winning the War on Terror decisively. Robbins claimed that Al-Qaeda's global terrorist network has been disrupted and can no longer receive state support. Furthermore, the Middle East is embracing democracy and America at an unprecedented rate, with recent events in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt cited as proof. A tough United States president has taught rogue regimes that they will no longer be tolerated, thanks to firm and determined use of U. S. force. However, the "mainstream media," in its intransigent quest for negativity and its liberal bias, has largely ignored the story of American success which has emerged from the War on Terror.
The fact that most of Robbins' lecture seems so rote and predictable is testimony to the way the Republican Party and the right-wing in general have coordinated, refined and disseminated their message on terrorism. Overall, the Republican Party's assertive stand on terrorism has clearly been a boon, as reflected by exit polling. For example, the 2004 exit polls found that of the 19 percent of voters who believed terrorism the most important issue, 86 percent voted for Bush, while 58 percent of voters indicated that they did not trust Kerry on terrorism. Certainly the terrorism issue provides the best explanation of Bush's significant increase in support in culturally liberal northeastern states, such as New York, where Bush's vote increased by 5 percent, with the most significant increases coming from New York City, and New Jersey, where Bush's vote increased by 6 percent.
Yet even if Bush's terrorism message has worked at the polls, there is reason to question the recent association of internationalist foreign policy and the Republican Party. We should not forget the foreign policy alignment of the 1990s, when it was Democrats who supported foreign intervention in Kosovo, Iraq and Somalia, with Republicans usually in solid opposition to intervention on pseudo-isolationist grounds, decrying "nation-building," and asserting that the United States should only intervene where national interests are at stake. President Bush infamously voiced this line during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
While President Bush tried to sell his Iraq War on the basis of Iraq's posing an imminent threat, the grounds on which the Iraq War is now justified have switched to a rather humanitarian concern in spreading democracy and overthrowing despotic rulers. In the wake of seemingly successful elections in Iraq, moreover, it has become considerably harder to argue that U.S. intervention was unjustified, or that the United States should never undertake humanitarian intervention in the future. In other words, President Clinton's humanitarian-focused foreign policy seems to have been reborn under a new guise.
Robbins emphasized that the Al-Qaeda threat was apparent before Sept. 11, and took the Clinton Administration to task for "ignoring" terrorism during its time in power. However, there is little evidence that the Republicans were paying any more attention to this issue of terrorism during the 1990s.
While much of the American public, then, seems to credit the Republican Party for taking a strong stand on terrorism, then, we should realize that this ideology has only been popularized since Sept. 11 and does not reflect any preexisting ideological commitments of the political parties. Republican championing of Iraq as justified on humanitarian grounds stands in stark tension with many of that party's stands in the 1990s.
Noah Peters' column usually appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at npeters@cavalierdaily.com.
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