Salon.com | Dissecting Cheney

Salon.com | Dissecting Cheney: "Although the 'global war on terror' was rooted in a real event, it was conducted in a way fundamentally oriented to the political opportunities this event created rather than the actual dangers it revealed. Thus the administration's neglect of port security, the squeeze on first responders, the negligence at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, the flippant attitude toward the nuclear risks in Russian stockpiles and Pakistani labs. Thus the pathetic system of colored alerts and the roundup and detention of irrelevant people, not a single one of whom has been convicted of a terrorism-related offense in the three years since.


Rule through fear remains an essential part of Cheney's message; he reiterates it every day on the stump. But three years after Sept. 11, the message no longer resonates. It has come to sound, to most Americans, like an excuse for failure in every other sphere. And overseas, the clash of civilizations has never worked as a cry for the mobilization of the West. The major European states are not conned, and neither is Japan. They have much more experience of political terror than we do -- and they realize that the job of rolling up the terror networks belongs, for the most part, to the national and international police. For this reason, the global bargain that held up the dollar through the Cold War is imperiled. You can be sure that Cheney has no idea how to restore it."