Republican apologists for George Bush have been trying to justify his enormous disaster in Iraq by pointing out that no major terrorist attacks have occurred in the U.S. since 9/11. They assert, without proof, that Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq (including his policies of rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaps, suspension of habeus corpus, etc.) have helped to prevent another terrorist event. They claim this demonstrates that America is “winning the war on terror.” Several Republican presidential candidates, and quite a few congressional ones, have been making such arguments to bolster their campaigns for the 2008 election. Their reasoning contains two glaring errors. One is that correlation does not prove causation. There is simply no evidence of any causal relationship between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the absence of major terrorist attacks in America. Stationing U.S. troops in Baghdad might offer Mid-East terrorists easier American targets, thus reducing their desire to come to America, but it does not prevent them from doing so.  Indeed, the available evidence indicates that terrorist recruiting has dramatically increased in the Mid-East over the past few years, suggesting that Bush’s invasion has increased the long-term terrorist threat and greatly reduced America’s long-term security.

A second, and more disturbing, flaw in Republican reasoning is their erroneous assumption that suicide bombing is the only way to attack a nation. There is also, for example, economic terrorism. Indeed, America itself has often used economic terrorism — e.g., trade sanctions, predatory lending, etc. — to bully and coerce other nations. We should not assume America cannot also be a target of such attacks, though of a different type than America uses.

In this latter regard, George Bush might be al Qaida’s best friend. Not only has Bush’s occupation of Iraq been a political failure, it has also been a financial disaster. For the relatively insignificant cost of box-cutters, suicide vests, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), etc., al Qaida and other Muslim extremist groups have inflicted gigantic losses against the U.S. treasury — to the tune of half a trillion dollars and rising. Indeed, the entire terrorist budget spent against America is probably less than the $25 billion that America has lost in Iraq to fraud and corruption alone. Were you in Osama bin Laden’s shoes right now, you would no doubt be delighted with Bush’s so-called “war on terrorism,” especially his invasion of Iraq. Bush has destroyed America’s moral standing across the globe; enraged the Muslim world against the west; given Muslim extremists easy American targets to kill in Iraq; ignited huge al Qaida recruiting efforts all over the Middle East; and, to top it all off, driven America deeply into debt to pay for it. For every dollar al Qaida has spent against America, Bush has spent ten thousand to respond. Sure, al Qaida has not blown up any more American real estate, but what more could they wish to achieve? George Bush has done more to weaken America and strengthen al Qaida in the past six years than Osama bin Laden himself has done. Perhaps it is no surprise that al Qaida has not blown up more buildings in America: why should they? Bush is already doing more to ruin America than they could possibly hope to achieve through the bombing of a few buildings. In the “war on terror,” Bush has been al Qaida’s best ally. He is, unwittingly, their best friend.

I hope you will consider these issues when you hear Republican political candidates praising Bush’s policies in the so-called “war on terror.” When they point to the absence of a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, do not assume this demonstrates that Bush’s policies are succeeding. In fact, the opposite is true, because American losses have come in other forms — forms that are not measured in collapsed buildings, but in spiraling debt, a falling value of the U.S. dollar, and widespread disgust with American policies.