Another 'Mission Accomplished' Moment?

"This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike 'the law enforcement approach,' does 'work.' . . .

"It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics -- unrealism."

The Politics of Terror

There were some fresh straw-men yesterday from the president himself, who regularly takes on the made-up arguments of imaginary opponents.

For instance: "Some say that America caused the current instability in the Middle East by pursuing a forward strategy of freedom, yet history shows otherwise," Bush said. He then argued that because America was the object of terror attacks before his policies, they couldn't possibly be responsible.

But of course Bush's real critics don't argue that his agenda is the only cause of terrorism. They do argue that the application of brute force might be making it worse. And they argue that Iraq is a distraction in the fight against terrorists.

In fact, as Carl Hulse writes in the New York Times: "Seeking to counter White House efforts to turn the reported terrorist plot in Britain to Republican advantage, Democrats are using the arrests of the suspects to try to show Americans how the war in Iraq has fueled Islamic radicalism and distracted Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress from shoring up security at home. They say they intend to drive that message home as the nation observes the coming anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks."

All this also reminds me of Lisa Byer 's article in Time a while back explaining that Hezbollah really has nothing to do with the global jihad generally considered the target of Bush's war on terror.

Poll Watch

CBS News reports: "While the war in Iraq remains the number one problem facing the country, terrorism has risen to the number two concern, according to 17 percent of the respondents, up from just 7 percent last month."

But in contrast to a much-ballyhooed Newsweek poll , CBS reports: "The arrests in Britain have not helped President Bush's popularity so far, the CBS poll finds. His job approval remains exactly at 36 percent, where it was a month ago. Even the president's rating for handling terrorism -- his strongest suit -- remains unchanged at 51 percent."

Similarly a new Gallup Poll found Bush's approval rating back down to 37 percent. And while most of the poll's interviews were conducted before news of the terror plot broke, Gallup reports that "interviews conducted after the news became public were only slightly more favorable to Bush than those conducted before."

Gallup also notes that "because Bush's approval ratings have remained fairly stable for more than two months, data from June through August can be combined to allow for in-depth . . . analysis of which groups are more or less likely to support him."

That makes for some interesting, although hardly surprising, figures. For instance, Bush's approval rating is lowest in the East (30 percent) and highest in the South (44 percent); his approval among blacks is 14 percent; and women (34 percent approval) dislike Bush even more than men (42 percent approval.)