David Horowitz: Bush Needs to Focus on War Against Terrorism

Newsmax.com ^ | 06-03-04 | Dougherty, Jon E.

[Theodore R.]

Horowitz: Bush Needs to Focus on War Against Terrorism Jon E. Dougherty, NewsMax.com Thursday, June 3, 2004

Are President Bush and Republicans due to suffer defeat at the hands of voters this fall, or will they continue to hold majority status in both houses of Congress and the White House?

Conservative thinker and long-time civil rights advocate David Horowitz says that largely depends on the message the White House and the GOP delivers to the American people.

In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, Horowitz said that Bush's lull in popularity indicated "he's in trouble," but that it was a situation far from hopeless, provided the Bush-Cheney campaign gets in high gear and starts taking the fight to rival John Kerry and the Democratic Party.

The noted author and founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture accused the nation's top television and newspaper reporters, editors and talking heads of aiding and abetting America's terrorist enemies with a series of negative reports about the president, many of which he says are being purposely overblown for maximum damage.

To break through all the media noise, Horowitz says Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney must remain true to the message Americans should be hearing: that the war on terror is the only issue of importance in the November election and that Bush, Cheney and other Republicans are best suited to wage and win it.

In fact, the president has already starting following Horowitz’s advice. Speaking Wednesday to graduates of the Air Force Academy, Bush compared the war on terrorism to World War II.

No More Mr. Nice Guys

"Absorbing [media] punishment is not the way to win an election," says Horowitz, whose popular Web site FrontPage Magazine regularly explores political, social and cultural issues from a conservative point of view.

Instead Bush, Cheney and the GOP need to go on the offensive against Kerry, Democrats and the legacy of failure regarding the war on terror left behind by the Clinton administration.

"The Bush [camp] made a decision in the 2000 campaign to take the high road, which is kind of what Republicans do," Horowitz said. "But they don't realize that if the Democrats are allowed to launch a scorched-earth policy against them, without prior engagement, eventually that high road won't look so high anymore."

The best example that comes to mind, he said, is the decline in President Bush's reputation and standing since the 9/11 commission, nonpartisan in theory but not reality, began holding public hearings and releasing its findings.

The major media especially focused on charges by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who claimed in a recent book the Clinton administration (despite its refusal of Sudan’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden) did everything in its power to combat terrorism whereas the Bush administration, which had been in power only eight months on Sept. 11, 2001, ignored the threat, a charge later proven false.

Still, with Clarke's claims echoing through major media that is mostly anti-Bush/anti-Republican, some of the charges stuck. Now, Horowitz says, it's time for Bush and Republicans to regain the initiative and fight back with a vengeance.

They can start with the truth, he says.

"The Clinton administration was so derelict in the eight years leading up to 9/11 that it's reasonable to say that 9/11 is Bill Clinton's legacy," Horowitz told NewsMax. "The first World Trade Center attack was in 1993," followed "by five major attacks by al-Qaida on Americans and American forces in the intervening years and nothing with a capital 'N' was done about it."

But, he says, "the Bush administration took the high road and didn't attack or criticize the Clinton administration for its dereliction, so, lo and behold, the Bush administration itself has become the target of these accusations, as absurd as they are."

Be 'Offensive'

Horowitz says the administration, if it wants to be re-elected, should go on the political offensive and leave behind the passivity of the first campaign.

"This isn't rocket science," he told NewsMax, noting that other top pundits such as Fox News analyst and noted author Dick Morris, whose latest book, "Rewriting History," has become an instant best seller, have made similar observations.

"The American people have to ask the question as to whether they'd rather we take casualties in Karbala and Fallujah or New York and Washington, D.C., because that's the choice," said Horowitz.

"Bush has said Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, but it's been buried in his speeches," said Horowitz, including the first speech he made last week outlining his Iraq strategy for now and beyond the June 30 handover of power to a new Iraqi government.

"The election is entirely about Iraq. Entirely," he insisted. "Forget everything else. If the economy were in the tank — and of course, a terrorist attack may put it there — it would be a somewhat different story.

"This election is about the war in Iraq, and the war on terror," he said, "and whether we fight it as rounding up individual criminals, the way Clinton 'fought' for eight years — and lost — or whether we're going to fight it as a war, the way the Bush administration has been fighting it and winning it," Horowitz said.

He believes the attacks on the Bush administration are "unprecedented in a time of war," and "amounts to aid and comfort to the enemy."

Democrats ‘Sabotage’ the War

Bush's victories in the war on terror have been substantial and impressive, especially in the short amount of time the fight has been under way, he said.

From the ashes of 9/11, Bush led the nation to a quick victories in toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan — a regime that openly backed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorists — and Iraq, in toppling Saddam Hussein, a figure who many believe was providing assistance to America's terrorist enemies.

In doing so, Horowitz pointed out, the Bush administration has killed or captured two-thirds of al-Qaida’s leadership, tied up tens of millions of dollars in terrorist financing, smashed a number of terrorist fund-raising operations, and managed to secure assistance from dozens of nations all over the world in the meantime. And he's done it while preventing further attacks on U.S. soil, putting the U.S. economy back on track and rejuvenating employment.

Furthermore, the Bush administration, along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has persuaded Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to break from his terrorist past, something the Clinton administration made no progress on in eight years.

To detract from these successes, Horowitz says the Democrats have attempted to "sabotage" the war.

"In truth, while the president is attacking terrorists, Democrats are attacking the president. That is the truth," he said.

Single-Issue Election

Horowitz maintains the election isn't about gay marriage, the economy, taxes and tax relief, or the price of gasoline. It is about one thing and one thing only: the war on terror.

"Those are all issues, but … when the head of the CIA and Justice Department go on television and warn people that there could be a major terrorist attack in the country, and included in the possibility there are nuclear weapons that could kill 25 million people — that's one of the plans — gay marriage just doesn't make the list" of important concerns, he said.

"Gay marriage is a long-running American cultural battle," said Horowitz. "The war on terror is something entirely different."

He says the polls showing Kerry making recent gains should be discounted.

"All the polls are showing is that a two-faced, lying, stab-America-in-the-back leftist is running neck-and-neck with the president," he said. "That's all they show. They don't show anything else."

Attacking the Attackers

President Bush is desperately trying to fight and win a two-front global terror war, but Democrats and other war opponents have hampered him, says Horowitz.

"He's been called a 'war criminal,' and that is so extreme. That's what Jane Fonda did in the 1960s," said Horowitz, a former radical leftist himself during that period.

"Is the Democratic Party now the party of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and Michael Moore, because that's what it looks like," he said.

Horowitz believes that is how the Bush-Cheney campaign should and must present its case to American voters. "That's how they should frame the issue, by asking that question," he said.

Bush “needs to get out there and say, over and over, why the war in Iraq isthe war on terror. He needs to explain that terrorists, without the support of nation-states, cannot operate," he said.

"Bush needs to explain there were five terrorist states — Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq and North Korea — and now there are three terrorist states. And until we deal with those terrorist states . . . no American is going to be safe. He needs to remind Americans Iraq borders on two of those states, Iran and Syria, and having the American military, instead of unarmed American civilians, taking the battle to [the terrorist forces] is a good thing."

Candidate Kerry

Horowitz described Sen. John Kerry as a "terrific" candidate, but he believes the Bush-Cheney campaign has been "quite good at nailing Kerry."

"I think their 'flip-flop' ads have been terrific, and I think they've done their job," he told NewsMax. "The last several weeks of news for the president, news shaped by a hostile media and by Democrats' superior tactics and aggressiveness, have put the president in this kind of 'tie' zone. But I think the [Bush-Cheney] ads are the only reason the president isn't losing."

But Kerry himself is not the issue, Horowitz says. "When an incumbent president is running, he's the issue. This election is a referendum on the administration, and he is not defending it well."

"No one really knows" if a terrorist attack between now and November helps or hurts the Bush-Cheney campaign, Horowitz said, but certainly such an attack could hurt the nation as a whole.

"Everything in politics is the way you spin it," he said. "The Democrats have the press, and the Bush administration and Republicans have the bully pulpit."

Bush the Man

November could come down to whom voters believe, whom they feel can lead the nation through these trying times and with whom they feel most comfortable.

"Anyone who has ever been at a fund-raising event where Bush has not had to work off a script or has been in a room with him, he's a funny, quick-witted and witty, appealing human being," said Horowitz, whose latest book, “Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey,” became a national best seller.

"But you would never know that from seeing him on TV, and that's where the voters are," he said, noting his first speech last week discussing Iraq and the country's future was "ineffective and boring."

"Get him off those podiums, get him into rooms, let him do a town hall meeting, let him do a fireside chat, let him do whatever it takes — an Oprah interview, something — but get him in his element, and let him get angry at these attacks on him," said Horowitz.

[Theodore R.]

"No More Mr. Nice Guys," eh?

We shall see.

[trebb]

I pray that the Bush team has been gathering ammo and is prepared to give us the equivalence of the "Grand Finale" at a fireworks show and leave smoking craters where the Dims hang out.

[goldstategop]

The President and his campaign have been acting like they want badly to lose. If they've gone on the offensive I have yet to see it.

[Theodore R.]

Yes, Woodrow Wilson once claimed that he was "too proud" to fight and then went into World War I, a real disaster. It's look like Bush-Cheney keep talking about a political fight, but "being nice" always gets the final nod.