JOHN BRUMMETT Advertisement

Facing a midterm election in which its party could well lose the House of Representatives, the Bush administration has started saying something newly audacious.

It's that anyone opposing the war on terror is a Neville Chamberlain-styled appeaser who would not have stood up to Islamic terrorism's modern historical equivalents, meaning World War II's axis powers.

Democrats should say "amen." Then they should say, "Right back at you, buddy." Call and raise, in other words.

They surely agree without any hesitation that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida amount, in terms of evil aggression, to Nazi equivalents. They surely agree that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center five years ago qualifies easily as a brazen act of war every bit as dastardly and horrible as that of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Democrats surely agree that the United States has no choice but to make whatever citizen sacrifices are necessary to avail itself of its power and greatness and go into the mouth of this evil enemy; that the country must engage this foe in a fight to the very death, just as it sent what has been called its greatest generation to defeat the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese on distant Pacific islands.

But in saying "right back at you, buddy," the Democrats should be willing to assert the basic truth that the Bush administration has not practiced what it preaches.

They should make the plain and evident case that the Bush administration has not confronted the evil enemy, but deployed a defensive, reactive strategy that emphasizes intercepting attacks that are in the works, not going to and destroying the persons actually doing the planning. Police work over military action, in other words.

And this strategy asks only one sacrifice of the American citizenry. It's not one of public service or rationed resources or a special tax. It's a sacrifice of our Constitution and its protections against governmental invasions of our privacy.

Meantime, the Bush administration has dissipated our will and focus, not to mention our military might, with a nonsensical invasion of an irrelevant bystander.

Confronted by the metastasizing cancer of Islamic terrorism, the Bush administration tapped its health insurance provider for the elective shoulder surgery of Iraq.

As always, we should rely on generals.

Colin Powell said you only go to war with an overpowering force that guarantees unequivocal victory and limits your casualties. He said invading Iraq was problematic because, like the rule at the Pottery Barn, you pay for what you break.

Wesley Clark said America doesn't start wars or succeed on its own; it ends wars and triumphs when in alliance with Europe.

The Bush administration could legitimately compare its leadership in the war on terror to FDR's during World War II only in a case akin to this: Let's say FDR had become distracted from the Nazis and Japanese by a dictatorship in South America for which he bore a special disdain. Let's say he'd sent troops and tanks to an Amazon jungle for a guerilla war not clearly winnable, fomenting seemingly irreparable instability and engendering anti-American sentiment throughout a region that previously had been pretty much on our side in the fight with the Nazis and Japanese.

Then, in political trouble, let's say that FDR had charged that anyone opposing his folly in South America was lily-livered on Nazis and Japanese imperialism.

Let's get back to reality, please. FDR told us that all we had to fear was fear itself. With the Bush administration, we have more than that to fear. We have terrorist enemies we're emboldening, not destroying. We have the Bush administration.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.