Tufts experts cite failures on the part of President George W. Bush and John Kerry in the way they have chosen to address national security and terrorism.
The Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq has left the United States "much less secure," according to Assistant Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Taliaferro.
He described the tremendous cost of the war and the way it has "alienated the entire Arab world and also our traditional allies - it has done incredible damage to U.S. interests around the world."
Despite the "ever-changing public rationales for the war," Taliaferro said the core of the American security strategy stems from neoconservative views on terrorism.
In their eyes, terrorism is a direct result of domestic politics in the Arab world, Taliaferro said, since young Arab men can only express their frustrations through militant Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups.
The Bush administration responded to this perceived threat first by overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan and then ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Taliaferro said.
Though Kerry has criticized Bush's failures mostly vis-? -vis foreign policy, he has not produced a coherent alternative rationale for security and terrorism, Professor of Political Science Tony Smith said.
"Kerry has been inconsistent on the war," he said. "But his statement only about a month ago that if he knew then, when he voted to support the President who was moving toward war, what he knows now he'd still vote for war, sums it all up."
Erik Dahl, a Ph.D. candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a retired naval intelligence officer, called it "disappointing" that Kerry, who served in the military, could not put together a more substantial alternative view on Iraq or portray himself as soft on terrorists.
"He does not want to challenge the strong leadership of a wartime president," Dahl said.
Kerry's counterpoint to Bush's Iraq argument has mainly focused on his failures in Afghanistan - the military failure to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and flawed management on the ground, Dahl said.
He said Kerry has also made the case that Bush has not focused attention on other, more pressing threats to national security from abroad, including Iran and North Korea.
Despite these inconsistencies, Kerry portrays himself as more open-minded to diplomacy and does not attract the same dislike abroad as Bush currently does. "In light of frayed relations with long-standing allies, Kerry [as president] would be much better positioned to rebuild than would a second Bush term," Taliaferro said.
Though many of Bush's policies are unpopular aboard, particularly in Europe, he still garners support at home with his "smoke-'em-out" rhetoric and divisive but definitive policy decisions.
"Recent polls have shown that Bush voters tend to believe - two thirds of them - that Saddam had a major [weapons of mass destruction] industry going and that he was working with al Qaeda," Smith said.
Both assumptions are incorrect, Smith said but provides for "a population frightened by Sept. 11 and patriotic in defense of the homeland to vote for the Republicans whom they correctly identify as being more aggressive militarily."
The nature of terrorism, however, makes it impossible to predict the odds of another direct terrorist attack, Taliaferro said.
"Al Qaeda is a threat that is still there, and can possibly grow regardless of whether Bush or Kerry occupies the office," he said.
According to Taliaferro, Bush's domestic security policy has been mainly focused on restricting the number of visas issued to foreigners, based "on theory that [these people] might be potential terrorists," and establish cells capable of executing large-scale destruction, Taliaferro said.
This policy, however, has negative ramifications for the United States and leaves gaps in other areas of national security. "[The visa restrictions] are hurting the U.S. in the long run," Taliaferro said. "The U.S. depends on talented people from other countries to fill ranks of student bodies and play vital role in research and development."
Taliaferro said far more could be done to secure the transportation infrastructure and was appalled at "how little time and money was spent [on the part of the Bush administration] on securing ports. Airport and [marine] port security is still a mess; the railroad network is still vulnerable."
Kerry has criticized this aspect of domestic policy, as well as the Patriot Act and its restrictions on civil liberties. Many of his actions have implied that he would like to diffuse the atmosphere of fear.
But Kerry "walks a fine line," Dahl said, between presenting alternative ways of fighting terrorism and appearing weak to the American public.
"Against a wartime president, Kerry needs to not appear waffling or weak on the [severity of] the threats," he said.
