ANALYSIS
Terrorism alerts have Americans on edge, searching for duct tape

By CHUCK RAASCH
GNS Political Writer

WASHINGTON — This city seems ready to duck and cover.

The daily news reminds us that the new front lines of war are not only on remote battlefields but in workplaces, neighborhoods and cyberspace. As war with Iraq looms and increasingly dire warnings of future terrorism are issued, citizens buy duct tape and plastic, hoard bottled water and batteries. The shelves were empty of such supplies in many stores this week. In a suburban Maryland Target store, shoppers had cleaned out all but two battery-operated TVs and a handful of battery-operated radios by late Tuesday. Carts filled with bottled water and cans of pasta lined up at checkout.

But it seems such frail defense in an age of mass destruction.
Once, jokes were made about duct tape being able to bind any problem. No more. But the mother of all tapes has found a new use as political metaphor.

``We have to do better than duct tape as our response to homeland defense,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., as he criticized the government's inability to eliminate the al-Qaida network and catch Osama bin Laden.

President Bush's defenders call Daschle's rhetoric misplaced given that the government has gone to war in Afghanistan, tried to ``harden'' numerous targets around the country, beefed up the military budget and sent soldiers and secret agents around the world to chase bin Laden and his network. From the first days after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush has said the war on terrorism would be long and difficult. But Daschle's line did point out the obvious: The terrorist that Bush once said he wanted dead or alive is apparently still able to use global satellite networks as his personal channel of terror.

Bin Laden's new terrorist tape, released Tuesday, only added to orange-alert anxiety. What do nervous government officials know that they're not telling us? Or perhaps more ominously, what don't they know that worries them?

Washington has been through the anxiety before, most recently in October when snipers sent the metropolitan area scurrying for collective cover. Eventually, a grim persistence prevailed. Some people took extraordinary precautions that, in retrospect, seem overdone. Others simply got angry and were damned if any two-bit gunman was going to change their lives.

And history has provided similar moments of anxiety. Washington was considered reachable by those nuclear missiles the Soviets tried to assemble in Cuba back in that dark October of 1962, when political brinkmanship had citizens cleaning out bomb shelters and school kids practicing their duck-and-cover techniques under their desks. That threat morphed into 27 more years of Cold War, the short-lived ``peace dividend,'' and onto this new age of unprecedented threat from rogue states and terrorist networks.

Some of the geopolitics mocks history. The German foreign minister, whose country has been defended by U.S. troops for 58 years, wonders whether the United States has the staying power for after war in Iraq.

Philadelphia psychologist Diane Perlman, whose son goes to a university here, said that both an overanxious cleaning of the shelves of duct tape and the grim ``they're not going to change my life'' fatalism are irrational. The latter, she said, stems from what she calls ``the politics of the ego.''

Some see a gender gap in the reaction, with men more likely to be fatalistic and women more likely to go shopping for essentials to protect their families. Reactions also can be different between nonparents and parents who tend to ask in personal terms what kind of world will be left to their children.

What she fears, Perlman said, is that the terrorism fears could get worse if war breaks out in Iraq.
``A U.S. invasion would be an unparalleled opportunity for bin Laden to magnify his power and mobilize his base,'' said Perlman, who contributed to the recently released book, ``The Psychology of Terrorism.''

``He couldn't do it without our help,'' she said. ``Bin Laden's methodology, as demonstrated on 9-11, is to take our force and turn it against us.''

Soothing words are at a premium at times like these. Some say that confronting today's nexus of bad weapons and evil intentions is worth the chance for a safer world. Others seek comfort in religion, family or friends or pour their energies into protest. Many center their hope in the government's ability to protect its citizens.

But that's hard to do when your own government is adding to the weight of worry.

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© 2003, Gannett News Service