By Bennet Kelley

A recent Los Angeles Times poll found voters favoring Democratic control of Congress by 54-34 percent, but still preferring Republicans on national security and terrorism by 39-30 percent. This is why Karl Rove believes that the key to victory for the Republicans in the mid-term elections is to make it a fight over national security. Given the Republican’s foreign policy record, however, the Democrats’ response should be — “bring it on.”

In the past month alone the bitter fruit of the failed Bush foreign policy was in full bloom as nuclear North Korea defied U.S. warnings and tested its ballistic missiles which in theory can reach California. The New Yorker reported that Bush is considering a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear operations despite warnings from Pentagon brass that it is unlikely to succeed and “could lead to serious economic, political and military consequences.” The NATO Commander in Afghanistan complained that the west has taken “their eye off the ball” and underestimated a resurgent Taliban which has killed more coalition troops in the last six months than in the first 15 months of the war. And we learned that President Bush curtly dismissed an August 2001 CIA briefing on “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.,” that interrupted his Crawford vacation by snapping at the CIA briefer “(a)ll right, you’ve covered your ass.”

On top of this, Foreign Policy magazine released the alarming findings of its survey of 100 top national security experts in which they overwhelmingly agreed that the world was becoming more dangerous; we are not winning the “war on terror;” the war in Iraq and the actions at Guantanamo Bay were having a negative impact on this fight; and another major attack was likely to occur on U.S. soil in the next five years.

Never have the Republicans been more vulnerable on national security than they are now. Diplomats & Military Commanders for Change, a group of 27 former diplomats and military officers — all but three of whom served under Republican presidents — sums up the administration’s foreign policy as “motivated more by ideology than reasoned analysis” and “fail(ing) in the primary responsibilities of preserving national security.”

While the administration paid little attention to Al Qaeda before 9/11, it has remained on the back burner since. On Nov. 21, 2001 Bush issued orders to prepare war plans for Iraq but at that same time ignored CIA calls to dispatch Marines to Tora Bora to prevent bin Laden’s escape. By March 2002, the president conceded that “I just don’t spend that much time on (bin Laden).” That was evident in November 2003, when the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control reported that 21 of its 120 employees were investigating violations of U.S. sanctions on Cuba but only two were tracking Al Qaeda assets, or in 2005 when the CIA closed down its bin Laden unit despite the fact that its former head believes that bin Laden “remains the single most important threat to the United States.”

Similarly, despite the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, the Bush administration’s neocons refused to engage directly with either nation, allowing both situations to deteriorate while they focused on the least dangerous of the three “axis of evil” — Iraq. After three years of war in Iraq, at a price of nearly $300 billion and more than 20,000 casualties, there is no end is sight as the administration appears intent on fulfilling the neocons’ dream of permanent bases in Iraq.

Republicans perversely believe that they can exploit objections to the abuses at Guantanamo Bay by painting Democrats as “coddling terrorists;” but even Colin Powell believes Guantanamo must “be closed immediately” and his former chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, explains that departing from the Geneva Convention hurts our efforts against Al Qaeda because “(y)ou can't win ... a war of ideas by departing from your own ideas.”

The Democrats must make sure that the national security debate actually is about security. The message for Democrats is that while the Republicans focus on flag burning and Cuba, they are focusing on real security issues by calling for an increased focus on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan, doubling the number of Special Forces, increased funding for homeland security and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

Democrats should seize the opportunity for a true debate on national security since it will require voters to decide whether the Bush administration has made them more secure. As the news from the last month alone demonstrates, the answer is unquestionably no.

(Bennet Kelley (bennet@bennetkelley.com) is the former national co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s young professional arm and a Santa Monica lawyer.)