Mark Steyn's very powerful piece Backward-Thinking Kerry Unfit To Lead U.S. really puts everything in perspective regarding John Kerry's take on the 'nuisance of terrorism'.
Quoting Kerry in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine interview: ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise.''
So the senator has now made what was hitherto just a cheap crack from his opponents into formal policy: The Democrats are the Sept. 10 party.
Steyn reminds us of then Defense Secretary Bill Cohen's words after the U.S.S. Cole attack in 2000 when 17 US sailors were killed - the attack ''was not sufficiently provocative'' to warrant a response.
This is exactly what John Kerry is telling this nation today - attacks such as the U.S.S. Cole are relegated to nuisance category and not worthy of our attention or response.
Which is what led the terrorists down the path to 9/11.
I give you more of Steyn's article to consider:
... while you can make an argument for a ''managerial'' approach to terrorism, the analogy with prostitution sounds more like an undeclared surrender...
...And, as Kerry says, we've been here before: in the '90s. Back then, every so often al-Qaida blew up some military housing, a ship, couple of embassies, etc., and the Bill Clinton team shrugged it off as a nuisance. No matter how flamboyantly Osama bin Laden sashayed down the sidewalk in his fishnets and mini-skirt he couldn't catch the administration's eye.
So Osama tried again, on Sept. 11, 2001. And this time, like the escort ads in the Boston Yellow Pages, he was very provocative. And that's the point: Even if you take the Kerry Doctrine as seriously as the New York Times does, the nuance of nuisance depends largely on the terrorists. When all they could do was kill a few dozen here, a few hundred there, they were a ''nuisance'' to Clinton, Cohen, Kerry and Co.; when they came up with a plan that killed thousands, they became something more than a nuisance. But that change in status was determined largely by them. The Kerry Doctrine leaves it in their hands. And, in this kind of conflict, if you're not on the offensive, you're losing...
....So, for all that Bush is accused of being ''stubborn,'' it's Kerry who refuses to change. He reckons that Americans are worn out by the wild ride of the Bush years and really do long to ''get back to where they were'' -- back to Sept. 10, to the summer of shark attacks and missing congressional interns. All that going back to Sept. 10 means is that you'll have to learn the lessons of the morning after all over again: I do believe that, if clueless, complacent Kerry won, more Americans -- and Britons and Canadians and Australians and Europeans -- will die in terrorist ''nuisances.''
Steyn finishes with this:
But he won't win. Because enough Americans understand that going back to where we were means a return to polite fictions and dangerous illusions. That world is broken and you can't put that world back together.
I hope he's right. I hope that Americans DO understand exactly what is at stake and take that understanding with them into the voting booth on November 2nd.
DR
