Amid the euphoria many of us are feeling with Obama's clear lead 4 weeks before election day, we need a dose of reality.
Richard Clarke provides an ominous thought: al Qaeda Might Try to Affect the Election
Clarke has a new column in U.S. News and World Report that says some officials are worried.
He says:
..likely is the possibility that al Qaeda would hope the attack would benefit John McCain. Opinion polls, which, as noted above, al Qaeda reads closely, suggest that an attack would help McCain. Polls in Europe and the Middle East also suggest an overwhelming popular support there for Barack Obama. Al Qaeda would not like it if there were a popular American president again.
more thoughts after the jump
This is truly scary stuff. We need to remember that in spite of our feeling that we are on the side of history, history has sometimes had nasty and devastating surprises.
If an enemy of the U.S. wanted to demoralize the country, what attack would be more effective than one that derailed hope -- that took a country feeling on the verge of a new national awakening, and smashed it's opportunities.
We cannot control the terrorists - after all, military commanders always say the enemy has a vote. What we can control is our reaction.
Clarke says:
John Kerry believes that the so-called al Qaeda Halloween videotape released days before the last presidential election in the United States affected enough undecided voters that it may have made the difference in the outcome.
He believes such a tape is quite likely.
Even worse, he also thinks al Qaeda has trained people who are back up to the level where they could conduct a strike within the U.S.
If we are not prepared, if the Obama campaign is not prepared, the impact could be not just in lives and carnage again in the U.S., but in destroying our future as well.
Only we can prevent this by inoculating ourselves and our country against this kind of attack.
This election has to be about overcoming fear - and we have to be prepared for our enemies to massively fan the fears of all Americans in an attempt to manipulate public opinion.
Clarke concludes, talking about the recent attack on embassy in Yemen, and the bomb at the Marriott in Karachi:
Those who see the two attacks as the opening round of a pre-election campaign note that they were the first two major al Qaeda-related attacks on American facilities in a very long time, the first serious al Qaeda attack on an American embassy in a decade. Others believe that the timing of the two attacks was coincidence and that they were both dictated by internal dynamics in the countries where the attacks took place and not by the U.S. election campaign. Nonetheless, U.S. intelligence and security officials are worried. They admit that there is nothing concrete that suggests another attack, but they fear that al Qaeda may try something, maybe even in the United States
Finally - this has nothing to do with John McCain. McCain hates Al Qaeda as much as Barack Obama. However, by feeding the monster of fear with smears on Obama, McCain supporters are very vulnerable to react the way Al Qaeda would want them to react in the event of an attack. We have to somehow take this reaction off the table.
This article is also covered by Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglasias.