Dr. Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute on Generating Crises and Winning Votes by Pretending to Solve Them:
President Bush’s first political ad for the 2004 campaign indicates that he will play on post-September 11 public fear to attempt to convince voters not to change presidents in the middle of a national security “crisis.” Yet such opportunism is a classic case of a politician contributing to and exacerbating a crisis and then taking advantage of it politically.
In following that strategy, President Bush is taking a page from the playbook of his closest friend in the Middle East — Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Recall that before the Israeli election of February 2001, Sharon, then a candidate, made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — on which sits a mosque sacred to Moslems. That visit sparked the current Palestinian Intifada and allowed Sharon, who promised to take a hard line against the uprising, to get elected. Moreover, Sharon has few incentives to make peace with the Palestinians because the continued mayhem allows him to tout himself as the only man tough enough to guide Israel when security threats loom.
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