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 Bush's tax cuts won't kill anyone, and they can be repealed.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.
Uh, lugsoul, Qaddafi has already dramatically changed his mindset as a result of our actions in Iraq, including the fact that we stayed there in the face of mounting casualties. So we already have one case where it worked. And if despots understand anything, it's blunt force.
Never mind that "one vial, one canister, one crate", without a delivery system would do about as much damage as that idiotic cult in Japan and the Nerve gas.
But if the "one vial" theory was really a threat then we would have had "a day of horror like none we have ever known" a long time ago. If this was true? And hundreds and thousands of Americans can be killed by just a vial or canister or crate then why don't we have 120,000 troops checking every cargo container that comes into this country? We check 2% right now! What about the Mexican and Canadian borders? Yeah- right- Homland "security"? Yeah- one vial? What a sickening lie. I am getting mad right now.
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