With elections near, the White House is charging that Democratic policies on Iraq are harmful to America, warning if the U.S. “cuts and runs,” al-Qaida will fill the power vacuum and use the country to attack America.

As President Bush said Oct. 19 in Pennsylvania: “If we were to follow the Democrats’ prescriptions and withdraw from Iraq, we would be fulfilling Osama bin Laden’s highest aspirations.”

Karl Rove made a similar case in Buffalo on Friday.

Observers say this rhe-torical strategy resembles the 2004 election, when the administration used its reputation for being “tough on terrorism” to secure its hold on the presidency and Congress.

Within the context of the “war on terrorism” – as distinct from campaign politics – the strategy also resembles the case the White House made for invading Iraq in 2002-03.

The White House ap-proach now is, unless the U.S. fights until victory, it will lose, and that loss will damage U.S. safety, prestige and power. For emphasis, the president repeatedly cites bin Laden: “If we were to abandon that country,” the president said at his recent press conference, “the terrorists would establish a new safe haven from which to launch new attacks on America. How do I know that would happen? Because that’s what the enemy has told us would happen. That’s what they have said.”

Note the president’s certainty about what will happen in Iraq. Just as there was little evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003 – not to mention no credible evidence of ties between the Baath regime and al-Qaida – there is little reason to think were the U.S. to withdraw, al-Qaida “would” rule Iraq. Militant and capable of terror as it is, the movement does not enjoy the support of anywhere near the majority of residents of Iraq (as a whole or in its different regions), or their neighbors, who are all likely to resist its growth with as much determination as the U.S.

Terror war will continue

Moreover, even if the Democrats take Congress this year and a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008, it is highly unlikely the U.S. will withdraw from the war with al-Qaida. Remember: It was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who first took up arms against the organization, declaring after he ordered strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan that “the battle against terrorism” would “be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism” (8/20/98).

Few Democrats question the idea of such a war. Most say they want to fight it better. In other words, just as the administration exaggerated the realities of Iraq’s threat to the U.S. in 2002-03, it is now exaggerating – and misrepresenting – both al-Qaida’s potential to rule Iraq and Democratic approaches to the war on terror. Not only has it revived its politically convenient distortion of an al-Qaida/Iraq connection, it has also brazenly linked the former’s hostility with Democratic questioning of Republican policies.

The White House is indeed taking the possibility of an electoral regime change in the U.S. Congress very seriously. Before the war, the White House insisted the only appropriate “action” was war, the “risks of inaction” – we were told – being greater. Now with the costs of war rising on all sides, we are told the only appropriate action is voting Republican.

And beneath this rhetoric is the administration’s greatest conjecture – also reminiscent of 2003 – that more war will bring peace and not more war. The hard – and more accurate – truth is that no one really knows what tomorrow will bring in Iraq, where the realities of civil war and occupation defy simplification and require unmanipulated consideration now.

Andrew Davison
Poughkeepsie, NY

Andrew Davison is associate professor of political science at Vassar College where he teaches courses in political theory and politics in the Middle East. His latest book is Conquering Hearts and Minds:The American War Ideology in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, 1990-2003. For more, see Andy Davison.