My good friend, Jennifer Merolla, chair of Claremont Grad School's Politics and Policy Department, has a piece in the HuffinPuff Post. Interesting...
Throughout most of his presidency, public support for George W. Bush increased in conjunction with the terror threat level. Conventional wisdom tells us that the public rallies behind the sitting president when its national security is perceivably threatened. Yet, following the recent Christmas Day bombing attempt, approval ratings for President Barack Obama have remained fairly flat. Is this lukewarm response to our current president symptomatic of public apathy toward terrorism?
3 comments:
I think she is ignoring specifics to President Obama and this case that have had an effect. His attempt to replace the word "Terrorism" with "Man made disaster," his failure to associate it to AlQaeda early on, and his entering the accused into the civilian court system instead of the military seem to have more to do with lack of a bump than his party affiliation. Of course he is reinforcing the party opinion by his actions though.
Apathy towards terror? Perhaps. On the other hand, people might realize that the attempted attack was an act of retaliation to bombings in Yemen. Perhaps it is growing knowledge that these terrorist attacks are not arbitrary acts of evil but are provoked by US foreign policy.
Also, the government has completely distorted the meaning of Terrorism. It calls the killing of 7 CIA agents who it turns out were "overseeing strikes by the agency's remote-controlled aircraft along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border” an act of terror. These people are not civilians; they are engaged in acts of war; yet killing them was called an act of terror.
On the other hand, the US kills civilians all the time on levels higher than those of terrorists: http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m62014&hd=&size=1&l=e
I guess they operate under that statement made by the general in Avatar: "fight terror with terror."
-Sean
Maybe that 3 day delay from suntanning in Hawaii might have had an effect. You'd think a bombing attempt would have lit a fire under his breeches.
Post a Comment