Posted on 02/10/2004 6:04:13 AM PST by Warrior Nurse
DEMS DON'T GET TERROR THREAT
By NICOLE GELINAS
February 10, 2004 -- PRESIDENT Bush's $530 billion expansion of Medicare won't kill anyone, and it can be reversed. Bush's tax cuts won't kill anyone, and they can be repealed. A $500 billion budget deficit won't kill anyone, and it can be repaid. Islamist terrorists can - and will - kill people. So voters who are unhappy with Bush's unchecked spending habit - and they have a point - had better hold their noses and come to the polls in November.
Islamist terrorists remain the clearest and most present danger to America. Yet the Democrats who represent themselves as the foreign-policy experts of the pack would turn the clock on national security back to the middle of the Clinton era.
Frontrunner Sen. John Kerry had this to say recently: "The War on Terror is . . . is occasionally military, and it will be . . . for a long time. . . . But it's primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world - the very thing this administration is worst at."
No one doubts that we must improve our intelligence-gathering capabilities. But 9/11 proved that international terrorism can't be halted with aggressive law enforcement.
Those who bombed the Trade Center in '93 are rotting in prison; that attack ended in a law-enforcement victory for America. But the Twin Towers are no more; throwing Ramzi Yousef in jail was no deterrent. Law enforcement is no answer when those who hate us will die to kill us.
Can the FBI help? Sure. But daisy-cutters trump a wiretap anytime. Libya's Moammar Khadafy isn't dismantling his weapons programs because he's afraid of the FBI - he just doesn't want to find himself at the bottom of a spider hole in 2005.
"And, most importantly," Kerry continued, "the War on Terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven't embraced, because otherwise we're inviting a clash of civilizations." This root-causes stuff isn't "most important" - it's a footnote to the real war.
It's fine, and even useful, for us to examine the motives and living conditions of our enemies. But we mustn't confuse this with self-defense.
Mohamed Atta had plenty of clean water and fresh food in Florida. Yasser Arafat has stashed hundreds of millions of dollars abroad while his subjects remain poor. It's a noble sentiment for us to want to better the lives of innocents abroad who have been victimized by their own leaders. But that's charity, not security.
Gen. Wesley Clark offers no alternative to Kerry's approach - only excuses.
"We always recognized that there was a threat of terrorism," Clark admonished Tom Brokaw when asked about the failures of the Clinton administration. "And we began in 1996, with Khobar Towers, to really work on the . . . anti-terrorism measures. . . . In '98, when Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa against the United States, there should have been, at that point, measures to go and get Osama bin Laden. I'm told that there were such measures that were attempted to be undertaken. Why they didn't work . . . I don't know."
Message: Don't blame President Clinton - he tried his best.
The Dems are focused on process, not results. Clinton knew bin Laden was a threat, and he attempted to "undertake measures." That bin Laden plotted to kill 3,000 Americans during the waning years of his term is irrelevant. Since Clinton didn't run afoul of multilateral institutions, he gets a pass.
Bush has toppled two totalitarian regimes, rescued millions from Saddam and killed or detained thousands of terrorists. But he's still an ideologue and an international rogue, so, the Dems say, he has to go.
What Bush has accomplished since 9/11 was not pre-ordained. After that day, lots of folks were wringing their hands, saying things would never be the same - that Americans, like Israelis, would just have to live with some level of terrorism.
Bush said no.
Bush invited legitimate criticism when he paired his geopolitical achievements abroad with his effort to stop steroid abuse at home in his State of the Union speech. He shouldn't stoop to the programmatic level of the candidates - because they can't rise to his.
The risk on underestimating does also exist. But, with the exception of AQ's ability to pull off the 9/11 attacks, there is no history whatsoever of underestimating the attack capability of Islamicists. I'm not too worried about that. As far as the things they can actually pull off on a regular basis, there is no amount of military action that will stop a guy with a backpack from getting on a bus.
I guess you'd just prefer that we spend $1B a month or so thwarting overhyped threats. If one accepts the simplistic "we are just going to stop the threats before they arise" approach, there is no justification for not taking out Pakistan and Iran IMMEDIATELY. They both pose far greater threats than Iraq, because the threat of a "smoking gun appearing in the form of a mushroom cloud" is at least realistic in those cases.
The issue is far more asymetrical than that. Iraq was clearly a supporter of terrorism, had used chemical weapons in the past, had not complied with the terms of the 1991 cease fire regarding clear demonstration that they had destroyed their WMDs, was a destablizing force and was run by the worst of the pan-Arabist leaders. So there were plenty of reasons within the borders of Iraq to take out Saddam and his regime.
However, the benefits of taking out Saddam extend well beyond the borders of Iraq. Prior to the Iraq War, and thanks to a joint effort between Bush the Elder and Clinton, the world viewed American resolve through the filter of Mogadishu - and the tyrants believed that any American military action would be hamstrung by popular opposition once the body bags started coming back - and Clinton's subsequent tactics against Kosovo, namely bombing from high altitude to avoid casualties only buttressed that perception.
Now that America has shown that it will take out a despot that threatens our interests, not let the UN prevent us from action AND, most importantly, will maintain popular support in the face of casualties, all of a sudden the tyrants have to re-examine their premises that small-scale defensive actions would be sufficient to deter any American military action. And many of them are suddenly willing to cooperate with American demands - Qaddafi specifically alluded to the Iraq War and Saddams capture as the final determinant in his decision to end his WMD programs - programs that American intel underestimated.
So it is counterproductive to demand that we follow the same policy against Pakistan as we did against Iraq. Each country poses its own foreign policy challenges, its own ability to counter American power, and its own intertwining interests (with North Korea having the most, with ties to China and Russia and interested parties in South Korea and Japan). But now the despots eye the bloodied big stick in the hands of America and realize that their blood could be added to it as well. And that changes everything.
Unless and until the government is willing to put its money where its mouth is and protect our borders and our ports, this rings pretty hollow.
And that is only because of the time of the attacks. Alot of people weren't even at work yet or were out getting their breakfasts to take into work. If they had timed those attacks any later say about 9:30-10:00 there would have been a hell of alot more killed that day in NYC.
Your medicine reference is appropriate, but your analogy is a bit off. A more apt comparison would be between taking your own vaccine as opposed to killing off a carrier of the disease.
Perhaps this is where we disagree. You, and many others, seem to think that we can eradicate radical Islam simply by killing as many radical Muslims as we can find who have indicated some sympathy for those who would attack us. If we kill all those who might attack us, then there is no need to protect ourselves, because there is no threat. I, on the other hand, think that the elimination of the threat in the vast areas of the globe that we do not control is a fantasy, and a fantasy recklessly perpetuated by the Administration.
As for terrorist possibilities to hurt Kerry - do you really think they'd want to do away with their choice for President?
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