...it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there...
Last night John Kerry said "The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it."
If Kerry thinks Afghanistan is the real center of the War on Terror, it occurs to me that Iraq is just on the other side of Iran. Maybe that's not close enough for Kerry, but i think Iraq is definitely in the right neighborhood. And that's why Iraq is so important.
Kerry also said: ". . . I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora."
If you examine Kerry's insistence on finding Osama as the real goal of the War on Terror, you'll see the central flaw in his thinking. He still looks at this conflict as a law enforcement and containment problem. i believe most Americans realize we can't play that game anymore, just as most Europeans think that the law enforcement model is the only possible solution.
Europeans think that way because they lack the military strength for any alternative strategy. We don't suffer from that limitation. We can fix the problem of terrorism with a real long term solution. Our might allows us to do what the Europeans cannot. Like Bush said, it's hard work, but it's not an impossible task for Americans.
But Kerry thinks like a European; we all know that. He's an internationalist at the core, and always has been. Despite his hawkish double-talk, he mistrusts the use of American power the same way Europeans do. We - and i mean you and i - can't afford to mistrust our own power. The stakes are too high now.
Why? Because our enemy wants to kill us.
This is a new kind of war. Our enemy isn't like Imperial Japan in WWII. They don't want access to oil so they can create a new Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Our new enemy's goal is much simpler: They want all Americans to die.
Capturing Osama will not solve the problem of terrorism. The bad guys will still have the capability and the desire to kill Americans, with or without Osama. John Kerry must not win because if he is elected, we will lose our focus on the real goal of the War on Terror.
The real focus is long term. It is the transformation of the Islamic world. The only way - the only way - we can stop this enemy is to change the societies in which they live into free and democratic societies.
If the Islamic world does not change, we will be forever on defense in the War on Terror. Bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq is the first step in a long term strategy to protect America from future 9/11s. That's what i mean by being on offense.
John Kerry and his followers miss that very important point. They would have us abandon Bush's strategic goal and substitute the short term tactical goal of hunting down the sick and probably dying Osama bin Ladin. Not that we shouldn't bring him to justice, but it won't solve the problem of terrorism. Bush's strategy is designed to be a permanent solution.
Hugh Hewitt wrote:
Would the many terrorist attacks since 9/11 in Bali, Madrid, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Beslan and elsewhere have occurred had the United States focused all of its efforts on Afghanistan? Yes. Would Zarqawi still be roaming freely throughout Iraq and the middle east, building his parallel networks? Yes. Would killing Osama at Tora Bora have stopped the Islamist fanatics around the globe? No.Kerry calls Iraq the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sorry Kerry, President Bush was right (even when he flubbed the line) when he said "It's not a grand diversion, this is an essential that we get it right."John Kerry does not understand the enemy. He does not understand the war we are in, or how it must be waged. He doesn't understand the reason Libya disarmed. He doesn't get what's going on at all.
One more point. Despite Kerry's occasional hawkishness, don't forget that something like seventy percent of Kerry's support comes from the ant-war left. That's a big umbrella that contains few reasonable people, and a lot of kooks. We cannot allow Kerry to open the government up to this anti-American fifth column, which he will undoubtedly do. Remember, he was one of them once.
Kerry may talk about Afghanistan, but...I remember that, before the Afghan war started, very large numbers of leftists were against it, using terms like "genocide" (to refer to what the Americans were about to do, not what the Taliban was already doing.) As you point out, these people are a key part of Kerry's base. Would a Kerry administration, had it been in power, do what needed to be done in Afghanistan? I think it's highly questionable.
Posted by: David Foster on Oct. 1, 2004I tend to think that even a Kerry Administration would have done the right thing in Afghanistan, more or less. I say more or less because the knee-jerk political reaction may have been to immediately fire a few missiles to blow up a few empty tents and hit a camel in the ass, rather than to take our time and do the job right.
Posted by: Xrlq on Oct. 1, 2004my question is when do the country fully commit to the war effort. This must be done I think.
Posted by: Dex on Oct. 2, 2004All his life up to 2002, Kerry has shown himself to be a pacifist.
Under no circumstance, will Kerry use the military. He was very consistent up until he started his campaign.
In 2003 Kerry started his war talk so that he would have a chance to be elected. Since then Kerry has vacillated between being a warlord and a pacifist-hence the flip-flopping. This week he is a pacifist-his true self.
Posted by: Jake on Oct. 2, 2004What's the problem here?
I feel so much safer with the thought that if North Korea or Iran threatens us, President Kerry will call a summit to solve the problem. Those guys will cave in when he brings out his spitballs and protesters.
Don't you all feel warm and fuzzy at that prospect? He can also talk them to death; wait until he unloads the Senatespeak and reverts to his Boston Brahmin nasal superior accent. They'll line up to surrender.
Posted by: shelly s. on Oct. 3, 2004