US elections: the joker in the deck

David Seaton's News Links
At this moment the US presidential elections are centered around domestic political issues. health, taxes, immigration, etcetera. The two wars that America is fighting are on the back burner, simmering. The present conversation plays to the Democratic Party's strengths.

The only card the Republicans really have left to play these days is national security. Defense still seems the natural calling of mean, old, white men ... but things are so quiet.

In Iraq, the draw down from the surge has not begun and the insurgents are laying low in classic guerrilla fashion waiting till the coast is clear.

The mountain passes of Afghanistan are still filled with ice and snow and the Mujadeen in Pakistan only await the spring thaws to pour through them.

And then of course there is Osama.

Everybody seems to have forgotten him. I wonder what the old boy is up to?

Getting ready to decide who is to be President of the United States of America, I should imagine.

If you stop and think about it, Osama bin Laden owes the Republicans big. If Gore had won the election in 2000, (ok, I know he did win, but you know what I mean) then, when the Twin Towers went down, the United States, accompanied by all of NATO, would have gone through Afghanistan like a dose of fruit salts and bin Laden would have been brewed up in some hole in Tora Bora.

But Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld's ineptitude not only saved the sheik's life: by invading Iraq, by opening Guantanamo, by running Abu Ghraib and by supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, they made Osama bin Laden's case for the entire Muslim world. Who's your daddy?

Does Osama bin Laden want the Republicans to win?

Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

Now, even his worst enemies would have to admit that Osama bin Laden is a very focused, scheming, long headed fellow, so it is not difficult to imagine that he is not simply going to trust his fate to the wisdom of the American voters.

Maybe it's because I live in Madrid and have actually seen it happen that I expect a bomb to define the next US presidential election. In 2004, many observers thought that bin Laden's "October Surprise" video was enough to give Bush a second term. But after "four more years", it will take a bit more than a video to keep the Republicans in the White House.

As we move into Spring the Democratic candidacy will define itself, it will be either a woman whose major qualification is to be the wife of an ex-president or a young, untested African-American with no military experience. At that point first Afghanistan and then Iraq will begin to heat up. As the campaign hits October somebody in an explosive vest will blow him or herself up in an American shopping mall and with that mean, old, white, John McCain will be elected the 44th President.

In my opinion the only possible candidate that the Democrats had that could have survived this scenario and gone on to win is Al Gore, and short of a miracle in a brokered convention, he is not going to be the candidate. DS