One interesting tidbit highlighted in the Washington Post story on the new Bob Woodward book is a President, in stark contrast to his predecessor, that is strongly concerned by the threat of nuclear terrorism. The Washington Post notes:

A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here “a potential game changer.” He said: “When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one where you can’t afford any mistakes.”

While President Bush also claimed to share this concern and in the 2004 national security debate with John Kerry cited it as the most serious potential threat, the Bush administration did little to actually address it. This is not only evident in the lack of preparedness of the US at the time of Bush’s departure, but the lack of any big high-level international initiatives to address the threat. Instead, as Ambassador Robert Gallucci noted, the Bush administration was “sleepwalking on these issues.”

In stark contrast, the Obama administration hasn’t just paid lip service to the threat, it is actually taking steps to eliminate it. The Nuclear Security Summit that was held in Washington this past April elevated nuclear security to the top of the international agenda and put forth concrete work plans that advance the President’s goal of securing all loose nuclear materials within four years.

Yet despite being the largest gathering of heads of state in the US since the founding of the UN, the summit drew more attention from the Washington-based press corps for the traffic jams it caused than for the substantive purpose behind the gathering. Similarly, conservatives greeted the conference with a big yawn, saying sure it was important but it didn’t deal with the real “threat” of Iran. The reaction to the summit not only demonstrated how media coverage is essentially driven by horse-race politics, or alternatively by what conservatives think matter, but it also exposed how totally disconnected the right is with global political realities.

The nuclear terrorist threat is ultimately a trans-national threat that is rooted in the weakness of states, not the strengths. States in the former Soviet bloc that have nuclear materials, suffer from the decay of state institutions, and have a developed criminal black market are the frontlines in this fight. Once materials hit the black market, it is quite straight forward for terrorist groups to acquire them. In other words, a nuclear terrorist, just like a 9-11 terrorist, doesn’t need the support of any state actor.

Yet the right-wing national security establishment frankly does not comprehend the existence of non-state actors. Instead, everything is a state-based threat. By dismissing the Nuclear Security Summit as irrelevant because it didn’t directly address the “real” nuclear threat of Iran, as Charles Krauthammer did, the right only exposed their cluelessness. The fact is that the only way to combat nuclear terrorism is to get other countries to do mundane tasks to secure and consolidate their nuclear and radiological materials so they don’t fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists. One of the reasons the Bush administration paid lip service but did little to address the nuclear terror threat is because it ultimately requires multilateralism to address the threat. The United States can’t single handedly secure every countries’ nuclear materials. It can’t bomb criminal networks.

And, as a result, the right simply isn’t interested in this reality-based national security issue, even though it poses the most likely nuclear threat. You don’t see right wing national security conferences on how we can secure loose nuclear materials. No, instead you get bizarre conferences on some imagined EMP threat. You get arguments that nuclear security is all about building more nuclear weapons and missile defense. You get a hyper focus on states like Iraq, now Iran, that to the right are somehow intimately linked to Al Qaeda. You get a world view that is part cold war, part sci-fi futurist fantasy that is simply divorced from the reality of a modern globalizing world in which national borders increasingly mean less and in which global challenges and threats require collective global efforts.

In an interview with Bob Woodward earlier this year, President Obama said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever. … We absorbed it and we are stronger.” That confident portrayal of American resilience has been seized upon by right wing pundits. As Ken Gude notes on the Wonk Room, “conservative critics won’t tolerate this kind of reasoned leadership” from Obama. For instance, consider the following statement Liz Cheney released today:

This comment suggests an alarming fatalism on the part of President Obama and his administration. Once again the President seems either unwilling or unable to do what it takes to keep this nation safe. The President owes the American people an explanation.

Recall, Cheney’s father — the former vice president of the United States — told Meet the Press’s Tim Russert in 2002 that another terrorist attack was “almost a certainty.” He added it that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. got hit again:

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The prospect of another attack against the United States is very, very real. It’s just as real, in my opinion, as it was September 12.

TIM RUSSERT, NBC News: Not a matter of if, but when?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Not a matter of if, but when.

Is Liz Cheney outraged that her father stated that another terrorist attack on the homeland is a certain eventuality? She’s probably unaware that the Bush White House put out the following national security document that laid out a strategy of being “better able to absorb the impact” of a terrorist attack:

For each CI/KR [critical infrastructure and key resources] sector, we must collectively work to ensure the ability of power, communications, and other life sustaining systems to survive an attack by terrorists, a natural disaster, and other assessed risks or hazards. In the past, investments in redundant and duplicative infrastructure were used to achieve this objective. We must now focus on the resilience of the system as a whole – an approach that centers on investments that make the system better able to absorb the impact of an event without losing the capacity to function.

Perhaps Liz Cheney should demand an explanation from her father.

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Managing Director, National Security International Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Apparently contractually obligated to find fault with President Obama’s every utterance, a number of conservatives are currently freaking out over President Obama’s statement, via reporter Bob Woodward, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever… we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

President Obama is absolutely correct, our first priority is to detect and prevent terrorist from attacking the United States. If, however, in the unfortunate circumstance an attack is successful, America is strong enough to withstand the best terrorists can throw at us. But in today’s America, President Obama’s expression of our strength and resilience as a nation is for some evidence that he is not qualified to hold its highest office. Apparently, conservatives prefer a president to reflect their debilitating fear and project an America that is too weak to emerge even one terrorist attack.

But conservative critics won’t tolerate this kind of reasoned leadership. Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson claimed that Obama was “inviting another 9/11.” John Bolton added, “How can an American president say that as if he’s a detached observer and doesn’t care about Americans dying? I think people have been worried about his qualifications to be commander in chief for a long time, and that ought to prove it.”

Straining to miss the point, the Heritage Foundation wrote, “Saying that we could ‘absorb’ an attack does not mean that we want to absorb one. Americans want to be successful in the war on terror. Setting us up for defeat is far from a winning strategy.”

Terrorism is among the most emotive political issues facing Americans today. The memory of the horrific tragedy of 9/11 is still fresh and it is clear that our enemies remain at large and want to revisit more attacks on the United States. Our enmity and anger should be directed at those that want to do us harm while the energy we devote to introspection should be about summoning the strength to show our resolve to defeat their campaign of terror.

A small band of organized and determined terrorists can execute a successful attack anywhere in the world. A serious as those attacks could be, that is the limit of terrorists’ capabilities; they cannot defeat even a small nation let alone one as powerful as the United States. They know this and their entire strategy is to spread fear among their enemies thus provoking an over-reaction that ultimately weakens them far more than terrorists would ever be able to do on their own.

Effective counter-terrorism must avoid falling into this trap. Part of that strategy is to prepare for the aftermath of any successful attack by projecting a resolute determination not to succumb to fear. That is the message that President Obama was delivering to the American people through Woodward.

Americans are a resilient people. We faced down the fear of the Great Depression, turned the tide against the Japanese empire after Pearl Harbor, rolled back the march of the Nazis in Europe, and faced down the Soviet Union and their thousands of nuclear weapons. International terrorism is a serious national security threat, but it does not approach those other challenges either in size or in scope. It’s important to remain vigilant against the terrorist threat, but we should also remain vigilant against those who would cynically cultivate fear among Americans for their own political profit.