http://story.news.yahoo.com/newstmpl=story&u=/ap/20020201/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_th e_apocalypse_1
Bush Touts Anti-Terror Umbrella Fri Feb 1, 3:22 AM ET By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - "Fight on, America," President Bush exhorts. To him, the fight against terrorism is joined on every front now, with no end in sight. It's not just on battlefields or at border crossings but in schools, neighborhoods and homes, where he says teaching children, loving them and helping others are weapons to ward off the evil ones. Bearing America's mighty grievance born in September, flush with confidence from military progress and enjoying sky-high public support, the Republican president is on a roll even by the reckoning of Democrats. Yet there are voices, few at home, more abroad, wondering whether Bush is going a little too far with the apocalyptic war talk. "In rhetoric there's an impulse to repeat what works," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority in presidential words and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia. "At a certain point, people realize it's being overworked." With Bush promoting everything short of eating your spinach as central to the war on terrorism, she said, "he is beginning to stretch here toward the edge of plausibility." Few question the seriousness of the terrorist threat, a danger underscored with increasing gravity in the last few days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Thursday of possible attacks "vastly more deadly" than those of Sept. 11. But U.S. saber-rattling, such as Bush's assertion Thursday that countries that do not share American values "better get their house in order," spread nervousness abroad even among allies. Increasingly in recent weeks and most dramatically in his State of the Union speech and after it, Bush has brought diverse matters under the umbrella of the anti-terror war, the area where he is politically unassailable at home. _Economic growth has become economic "security." _The drug war is crossing paths with the terror war; the White House is sponsoring two Super Bowl commercials telling people that buying drugs could line the pockets of terrorists. _Bush is advocating cultural change - away from the "If it feels good, do it" ethos - as a means of fortifying the nation in the struggle of good and evil. _Education is no longer just a way to improve a child, a school or a community - something to do on its own merits. "We're looking for teachers," he told Floridians in a pitch for retired educators to help needy children. "And by doing so, we stand square in the face of evil. We tell the enemy, 'You can't get us.'" Probably not since Ronald Reagan have Americans seen a president so lacking in relativism. "We're fighting evil," he says, "and I don't see any shades of gray." Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California was a blunt if practically lone voice of semi-dissent after Bush's State of the Union speech. "Basically, he's played the war for whatever it's worth," she said. For the most part, Democrats are trying to carve out areas of domestic policy where they can take on Bush while heaping him with praise as the commander in chief. So far, Bush, devoting himself to a struggle that may outlast his presidency, has kept attention riveted on the war and his expansive definition of it. The alarms from the administration grew louder by the day this week, although the facts behind them were not always solid. First, White House officials warned in TV appearances before Bush's speech that up to 100,000 "terrorist killers" had been trained in the Afghan camps. Later, away from the cameras and under condition of anonymity, one senior official clarified the claim, putting the estimate of terrorists actually trained by al-Qaida where it had been before - 15,000 to 20,000. Bush settled on "tens of thousands" in his speech. On Thursday, Rumsfeld said adversaries may strike with ever more dangerous weapons. He was referring in part to missiles from countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq - the states Bush starkly described as an "axis of evil." Appropriating the language of combat for domestic ends is not new in a country that has tried to wage war on poverty, drugs, illiteracy and more. But Bush means it literally. "There are ways to fight terror other than wearing a uniform," he said. "People say, 'Well, gosh, I want to be part of the war against terror.' And my answer is, love somebody; be a good mother or dad." Even the wartime titan Franklin Roosevelt was dealing in analogy when he asked Congress for power to "wage a war against the emergency." The foe at hand, that day in 1933, was the Depression, not the Axis.
