FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"The Strange Symbiosis"

     Remember the date: September 11, 2006. The fifth anniversary. 
     President Bush was delivering one of the opening salvos in his drive to improve his poll numbers before the off-year elections in November. The speech was the usual barn-burner except for one standout element: it took Osama bin Laden to extravagant task. Making certain that everyone would understand who stood as the target of the jeremiad, Bush mentioned the terrormeister three separate times. 
     Raising his numbers, of course, the president feathers his own nest while hopefully improving the chances that he can help GOP candidates for both House and Senate seats. Loss of either chamber to voter disenchantment would be a serious blow to the incumbent's plans for his final two years. Loss of both chambers would be smoldering disaster. 
     How are elections won in these days of imperial conquest and the so-called war on terror?  Election success today calls for the repetition and inculcation of two misrepresentations, both of
which are concoctions formulated for a specific purpose. The first is simple: scare the daylights out of the American public by building the "war on terror" to terrifying proportions. The second rubric follows logically: improve by fair words or foul that the Republican Party has the dedication, wisdom, and experience to press this struggle--including (by their accounting) its Iraq war constituent--to its whenever conclusion. 
     The Bush tirade ran its course. Americans presumably took note. He's blasting Osama again. Could you pass the cream? But wait; look what happens days later. Osama's people come back with threats, insults, and poisoned darts of their own.
     Within hours or days after that phase of the exchange, Bush is back on the national stage rebutting the rebuttal. The Bad Men are out there still, ruthlessly plotting our national Judgment Day. 
     As well as can be determined from research, a political strategist named Don Rose first enunciated the lesson to be drawn from such back-and-forth thrusts-and-parries between Bush and bin Laden. Mr. Rose's article of February, 2006 bore the title, "Bin Laden, Bush Both Want Iraq War to Continue." Published in the Chicago Tribune, the article made the key point that the exchanges suggested that the two insulters had a "symbiotic relationship" going. Mr. Rose stated the case succinctly:
     "The American invasion and occupation of Iraq have done more to discredit the United States worldwide than any other action in our history. From the first shock-and-awe carpet-bombing of Baghdad to the ‘mission accomplished' speech through the last two years of blood and blundering across that land, most of the world condemned us while more and more of Islam rallied to bin Laden's side. 
     ". . .The occupation turned Iraq into a new nexus of terror, providing a far more fertile training ground and launching pad for terrorists than Afghanistan under the Taliban. The insurgencies continue. . ., all of which enhances the status of bin Laden, clearly expanding his base." 
     And the Washington cabal? What benefits does it reap from the symbiotic relationship? Specifically, what dividends flow from the periodic fulminations rumbling out of the mountains in eastern Afghanistan? To quote Mr. Rose again:
     "Bin Laden denounces him, and Bush can once again rally his troops, shout ‘Stay the course!' and denounce the Democratic peaceniks. Most of all, he [Bush] can again echo bin Laden's threat to attack us in our homeland and reassure us all that only he can keep us safe and secure. 
     "Bin Laden's re-emergence with the start of the Iraq insurgency was so perfect that it might as well have been staged by Bush strategist Karl Rove." 
     The back-and-forth exchanges with bin Laden constitute what has become a tried and true process. Normally the president begins, kicking off the reciprocal vituperation sessions. But either Bush or bin Laden may fire the first shot. Because it has continued now for years, it must have proven value and significance for both sides. Bin Laden presumably welcomes his recruits; Bush tightens his lock on the Iraq mess, touting Iraq as the decisive ideological struggle of the twenty-first century and proving that the Iraq war must continue until "total victory"--whatever that means. 
     There are endless other ploys that help Bush to keep Iraq in play as a battleground for the United States. If war in Iraq has won elections, as many contend, how about a 2008 war with Iran? or a western terror strike on Iran's nuclear facilities? As an alternative, how about some
extraordinarily loud saber-rattling? A new book suggests a still more dastardly alternative: Bush seizes the occasion of a terror strike (phony?) on the United States to run for a third term--and
win. The book is The Quagmire Chronicles: A Ficto-History of the Iraq Blunder (now available from Canada's Trafford Publishing and orderable online at trafford.com/06-1443).
     Assuming that the Rose analysis is accurate, and positing the unholy cynicism that makes possible a Bush-bin Laden symbiosis a question arises: Isn't it high time the Democrats exposed and made an issue of the practice? Is the point of the exercise too subtle? 
     Whatever the morality of the exchanges, and whatever the Democrats decide, it behooves all of us to turn on our hearing aids next time the president excoriates bin Laden. Listen for the answering blast. 
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