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Prior to Election Day, few Democrats dared to say that bin Laden's unknown whereabouts blemished President Bush's prosecution of the war on terrorism. Senator Jean Carnahan of Missouri tried on October 15: "I'm the number-one target of the White House. They can't get Osama bin Laden. They're going to get me." It was a cutting comment, but too self-serving. Carnahan took a big hit for these words, apologized, and lost her reelection bid to mild-mannered Republican Jim Talent.
Bush, for his part, has downplayed the importance of bin Laden. "Our objective is more than bin Laden," he said last December, in response to a question from a reporter. Bush is of course correct — the war on terrorism is about fighting a whole class of evildoers, not a single one of them. And there's something to be said for Bush's other claim: "This is a guy who, three months ago, was in control of a county. Now he's maybe in control of a cave. He's on the run." That's a worthy accomplishment. But bin Laden remains on everybody's mind. How could he not? It's what prompted the reporter to question Bush on bin Laden in the first place: "Are you afraid he's eluded the manhunt?" Whenever a new tape of the Saudi terrorist surfaces, as happened last week, the question rises again. Except that we no longer asking whether he's eluded a manhunt, but wondering why and how. Let's take as a given the enormous difficulty of tracking down a single person. It took the D.C.-area police a couple of weeks to catch the sniper suspects, who were allegedly murdering people in populated areas, leaving behind clues for the police, and roaming free despite the concentrated attention of the whole country. Bin Laden is smart, eager to live in austerity, and surrounded by sympathizers. It should come as no surprise that he might elude us, even for as long as he has. But that doesn't make it cost-free from a political standpoint. Last year, eight days after September 11, Ramesh Ponnuru and I described the potential problem:
Perhaps that second sentence was itself an overstatement. But perhaps not — and Democrats will work hard over the next two years to make it ring true, assuming bin Laden continues to remain at large. Last week, Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle went on the offensive: "I think we have to question whether or not we're winning the war. We haven't found bin Laden. We haven't made any real progress in many of the other areas involving the key elements of Al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were a year and a half ago. I don't want to proclaim that it's not successful, but I think there are increasing questions about whether or not the administration can legitimately say we are winning the war." It was a shrewd statement, making clever use of CIA director George Tenet's recent congressional testimony, which seemed to contradict Bush's "on-the-run" rhetoric: "The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer, the summer before 9/11." Daschle also engages in redirection: "I don't want to proclaim..." Then he goes ahead and proclaims it. Democratic senator Bob Graham of Florida also suggested last week that the administration should focus less on Iraq and more on Afghanistan. "If [bin Laden] is still alive and still in charge, that means al Qaeda continues to have a highly capable and venomous leader," he said. If the United States goes to war with Iraq, and if that war doesn't go as swimmingly as it might, then Graham's point takes on added resonance. And the Bush administration has a little bit more trouble explaining why bin Laden remains beyond our grasp. In July, Democratic senator John Kerry of Massachusetts offered his own version of events. He blamed the Bush administration for letting bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in March because it preferred to use Afghan troops instead of American ones. Kerry, a Navy veteran and probable candidate for president, told the New York Times, "If you are the skipper of the ship, and the ship runs aground while you are asleep in the stateroom, you are relieved of duty." And that's the top political goal for Kerry and his colleagues over the next two years: Relieving Bush of duty. As long as bin Laden remains out there, they'll have an easier time of it. |
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sama bin Laden
is about to become a partisan issue — and that's bad news for the
Bush administration, unless the world's leading madman is killed or captured.
