TAP: Morning After. by Seth Green

Have conservatives forgotten September 11?

It's an article of faith among neoconservatives that world opinion doesn't matter. But yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, GOP strategist Mary Matalin took this idea one step further. Defending the Bush administration's foreign policy, she specifically celebrated worldwide hatred of the United States as a sign of how strong George W. Bush's leadership has been. "[Bush] has been a leader," she argued, "and he has been a leader erring on the side of security for America, not on the side of being loved around the world." Apparently Matalin thinks it's a credit to Bush that he has no regard for world opinion. What's more, she wants Americans to believe that worldwide anger toward the United States is a barometer of just how principled Bush's foreign policy has been.

Yet the real story is exactly the opposite. Growing worldwide resentment of the United States has been prompted by Bush's practices, not his principles. Europeans, of course, overwhelmingly share American values of security, freedom and democracy. And a survey by the Pew Research Center released in December 2002 indicated that majorities in France and Germany supported the removal of Saddam Hussein. While these countries may have been less willing than the United States to use their own forces to bring about regime change in Iraq, they likely would have allowed America to apply its military might with little resistance. But after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld chastised Germany for keeping company with Libya and Cuba in opposing the Iraq War -- and others in the administration implied that Europe was doing Hussein's bidding -- anti-war demonstrations in Europe attracted unprecedented crowds.

American forces are traversing Iraq in search of elusive weapons of mass destruction while doing nothing to meet our most basic security needs at home. Emergency responders such as police officers and firefighters are woefully unprepared for a major terrorist attack, much as they were on Sept. 10, 2001. Hatred of the United States today is greater than it was then -- and despite Matalin's insistence to the contrary, that's not a good thing. For the last 21 months, GOP loyalists such as Matalin have sought to silence any reasonable criticism of the Bush administration's war on terrorism by asking, "Have you forgotten September 11?" Perhaps Americans need to start asking Bush the same question.