9/11, Fear and Rational Thought
On the sixth anniversary of 9/11, it's worth spending some time thinking about how the war on terrorism has, and continues, to change the way Americans think about politics. I watched part of MSNBC's coverage this morning - they replayed the tape of their actual coverage from 9/11 and it was remarkably chilling. On 9/11, I was working for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, waiting for a meeting to start in the third floor of the Capitol and watching the coverage of the attacks in New York. I remember seeing "smoke reported at the Pentagon" on the CNN crawl, and I casually walked over to a window overlooking the national mall and saw a huge plume of deep black smoke rising from the Pentagon. Watching the images today, listening to the rumors about car bombs at the State Department, and seeing the towers burn knowing that they were to collapse brought up many of the same emotions I felt watching the coverage six years ago, after evacuating the Capitol, and regrouping at a small office a few blocks away.
A little more than a month later, while in another morning meeting in Senator Daschle's personal office, we were interrupted and told that an intern had opened a letter containing a white powdery substance. The next day, I was told that I had inhaled anthrax spores. While no where near the scope or scale of the attacks of 9/11, this one obviously hit very close to home.
There is no question that the attacks of 9/11 are a defining moment in our country's history, and the attacks caused a sudden and remarkable shift in how Americans viewed foreign policy, national security, and the safety of their own families. Prior to the September 11 attacks, issues of foreign policy and national security were extremely low priorities for the American people. A July 2000 Gallup poll found "national defense" and "foreign affairs" trailing education, the economy, health care, social security, the budget, Medicare, taxes, jobs, and the environment in a list of important priorities for voters. That perception shifted dramatically in September, 2001. Today, six years after the attacks, war, terrorism and national security are at the top of the list when voters are asked the most important issues in the 2008 race for the White House.
Yet progressives still have very little real understanding of how the attacks of 9/11 changed the way people think about war and peace. With Americans angry and fearful of another attack, the progressive left failed to organize an opposition to the war that caused anything more than a few traffic delays and generated a few headlines. Congressional Democrats stepped over each other to be the first to join with the President to launch an attack on Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And the President had no problem building a bipartisan consensus that we must invade Iraq.
We all know that the bold assertions to the public, the UN, and the Congress that Saddam Hussein had WMD were not valid. And even though the administration made some outrageous statements attempting to link 9/11 to Iraq, many moderates and independents who supported invading Iraq knew there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. What the administration was able to do, however, was to capture the fear and anger caused by the terrorist attacks and create an opening for military action against a country some officials had been hoping to confront long before 9/11.
There is a tremendous amount of temptation for those on the left who opposed the war from the beginning to assert that America is less safe today because of the focus on Iraq. It's true that the focus on Iraq has caused the diversion of troops, money, attention and resources away from the mountainous Afghanistan/Pakistan border. It's true that Osama bin Laden is still at large, as is the responsible party for the anthrax attacks on the US Senate.
Rationally, it makes sense: Telling Americans that the Republican administration is responsible for a decrease in safety and security at home, should result in increased support for a change in leadership. But as we learned (or should have learned) as the war with Iraq was authorized, people don't approach these issues rationally.
In 2003, an article in Psychological Bulletin by John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie Kruglanski and Frank Sulloway provided some key insights into how fear motivates particular political behaviors. They found that when people are afraid, they actually become more conservative in their feelings, opinions and actions. The fear, regardless of the source, causes conservatism to become more prevalent across a variety of issue areas. It's not that fear of terrorism results in more conservative opinions on national security, it's that fear of terrorism causes more conservative worldviews on a variety of issues.
In our work on social values research, we've found this link to be valid in a host of areas. When Americans are afraid, they're less likely to be altruistic, compassionate, and otherwise progressive. It doesn't matter if that fear is of terrorist attack, assault in their neighborhood, or anxiety over finances.
And as I watched MSNBC's coverage this morning, I was reminded of the intensity of the emotions our country experienced on 9/11. Those emotions certainly colored our thinking, and the fear generated by that event likely led to a shift, at least temporarily, in our political thinking.
I know it's popular in progressive circles (and among Presidential candidates) to say that America is less safe today than it was on 9/11 as a result of the failure of the Bush administration's leadership. That might be entirely true. But those of us on the left should understand - the more we tell people they're not safe, the harder time we'll have of convincing them to embrace a progressive vision.