Posted on 10/12/2004 7:28:31 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
(Note: The following remarks delivered at BCO4 conference call yesterday)
For some time, and including when I spoke at the Republican Convention, I’ve wondered exactly what John Kerry’s approach would be to terrorism and I’ve wondered whether he had the conviction, the determination, and the focus, and the correct worldview to conduct a successful war against terrorism. And his quotations in the New York Times yesterday make it clear that he lacks that kind of committed view of the world. In fact, his comments are kind of extraordinary, particularly since he thinks we used to before September 11 live in a relatively safe world. He says we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.
I’m wondering exactly when Senator Kerry thought they were just a nuisance. Maybe when they attacked the USS Cole? Or when they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993? Or when they slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972? Or killed Leon Klinghoffer by throwing him overboard? Or the innumerable number of terrorist acts that they committed in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, leading up to September 11?
This is so different from the President’s view and my own, which is in those days, when we were fooling ourselves about the danger of terrorism, we were actually in the greatest danger. When you don’t confront correctly and view realistically the danger that you face, that’s when you’re at the greatest risk. When you at least realize the danger and you begin to confront it, then you begin to become safer. And for him to say that in the good old days – I’m assuming he means the 90s and the 80s and the 70s -- they were just a nuisance, this really begins to explain a lot of his inconsistent positions on how to deal with it because he’s not defining it correctly.
As a former law enforcement person, he says ‘I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it.’ This is not illegal gambling; this isn’t prostitution. Having been a former law enforcement person for a lot longer than John Kerry ever was, I don’t understand his confusion. Even when he says ‘organized crime to a level where it isn’t not on the rise,’ it was not the goal of the Justice Department to just reduce organized crime. It was the goal of the Justice Department to eliminate organized crime. Was there some acceptable level of organized crime: two families, instead of five, or they can control one union but not the other?
The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening. How do you explain that to the people who are beheaded or the innocent people that are killed, that we’re going to tolerate a certain acceptable [level] of terrorism, and that acceptable level will exist and then we’ll stop thinking about it? This is an extraordinary statement. I think it is not a statement that in any way is ancillary. I think this is the core of John Kerry’s thinking. This does create some consistency in his thinking.
It is consistent with his views on Vietnam: that we should have left and abandoned Vietnam. It is consistent with his view of Nicaragua and the Sandinistas. It is consistent with his view of opposing Ronald Reagan at every step of the way in the arms buildup that was necessary to destroy communism. It is consistent with his view of not supporting the Persian Gulf War, which was another extraordinary step. Whatever John Kerry’s global test is, the Persian Gulf War certainly would pass anyone’s global test. If it were up to John Kerry, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, but he’d still be controlling Kuwait.
Finally, what he did after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, where I guess at that point terrorism was still just a nuisance. He must have thought that because that’s why he proposed seriously reducing our intelligence budget, when you would think someone who was really sensitive to the problem of terrorism would have done just the opposite. I think that rather than being some aberrational comment, it is the core of the John Kerry philosophy: that terrorism is no different than domestic law enforcement problems, and that the best we’re ever going to be able to do is reduce it, so why not follow the more European approach of compromising with it the way Europeans did in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s?
This is so totally different than what I think was the major advance that President Bush made – significant advance that he made in the Bush Doctrine on September 20, 2001, when he said we’re going to face up to terrorism and we’re going to do everything we can to defeat it, completely. There’s no reason why we have to tolerate global terrorism, just like there’s no reason to tolerate organized crime.
So I think this is a seminal issue, this is one that explains or ties together a lot of things that we’ve talked about. Even this notion that the Kerry campaign was so upset that the Vice President and others were saying that he doesn’t understand the threat of terrorism; that he thinks it’s just a law enforcement action. It turns out the Vice President was right. He does and maybe this is a difference, maybe this is an honest difference that we really should debate straight out. He thinks that the threat is not as great as at least the President does, and I do, and the Vice President does.
Rudy Giuliani is the former Mayor of New York City.
Drain the Middle East swamp, then drain the U.N. swamp --
Hell, drain 'em at the same time!
If 3,000 dead Americans and the fact our country was ATTACKED on 9/11 doesn't clarify matters for John F*ckin', nothing will. He's unfit to lead this country since he doesn't understand the stakes involved and is unwilling to confront the danger to it at its source. Yes, Rudy we do have an obligation to eliminate, not just live, with terrorism.
Great Goin', Giuliani !
PONG
Giuliani is currently the most formidable candidate for 2008.
He would have fly-over country AND New York.
McCain would get fly-over which includes AZ.
Giuliani needs to reconsider being a "rilom" pro-lifer (rape, incest, life of mother.)
If he does so, he would most likely get the nod, imo.
Lando
Great remarks by Rudy.
If Kerry is elected, we can kiss America, our families and friends good bye!
kerry and the demoncrats will NEVER get it. Terrorists can NEVER be "tolerated" as a nuisance. What does kerry consider a nuisance, blowing up only one building instead of 3, hijacing only one plane, not 3? kerry is a LUNATIC.
One could only wish he were as strong and principled in some of his other positions where he is on the wrong side, like abortion and gun control. But, that is where he is. That does not bode well in the long run.
I spit in your botoxed eye. I've got news for you, you spoiled arrogant John Kerry, these murdering intolerant hateful butchering bastard terrorist scum need to be annihilated. They need to be decimated. They need to be crushed so that they never rise again to harm one hair of an American or anyone else.
John Kerry you are a despicable fool to think of us as so miserably to render the good citizens of the USA to such a status to bear the threat of terrorism as if it was a nuisance? Even your pampered wife says that we must live with terrorism just like Europe does.
The Kerry's are wrong for America. President Bush asked you if you got wood. Well, he was just too polite, because your brains are full of wood. And, your ideas are full of termites.
Thanks.Headin' for the State Fair of Texas. See ya later on tomorrow, folks.
bump!
Wouldn't he be a flip-flopper though if he did that?
I like Rudy. I'm glad to have him on our side, he's a great speaker and commands an audience. But--the reasons you have listed are why he's not Presidential material for the GOP. He'd be great in the WOT but domestically no better than a Democrat.
Put Rudy in the cabinet in a defense/foreign policy position, that is fine. Even if he ran for the Senate, I'd be OK with that to get Her Heinous Hillary out of there.
Kerry as a puppet of the freaky wing of the Democratic Party is a big enough disgrace. Left to his own personal philosophy, Kerry is even worse.
Bump!
And then, drain the Western, liberal utopian intellectual swamp. That last one is particularly disease ridden (after all, liberalism is a mental illness).
It would have to take place well ahead of the fact.
It would have to be a conscientious change of heart on a subject about which he had previously had a different opinion. And then there would have to be consistency and an ability to articulate his position.
I'm guessing he's a Catholic. If so, it SHOULD be something that he reconsiders. He's out of step with his own religion.
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