How to Lose the War on Terror
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
by Justin Darr
03/16/04
John Kerry gets mad enough to make his botox crinkle when he talks about President Bush’s leadership in the War on Terror. According to Kerry, Bush has led “the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history.”
So much for a positive campaign.
However, Kerry must use fanatical, veins popping out of his neck rhetoric for him to have any chance of confusing some voters into not noticing that we are winning the War on Terror under Bush. Despite Mr. Kerry’s tooth gnashing, he falls short on the specifics of exactly were President Bush has failed. Senator Kerry has a very good reason for this. On the official John Kerry for President website, you will find his Homeland Security Plan contains more distorted facts than the New York Times.
1. Use of the National Guard in the event of an attack to “helping evacuate or quarantine people, assisting in medical units; and helping communities set up and execute plans.” Sorry to burst your bubble, John, but the Guard has been doing this for decades despite your views that those who joined the Guard were “draft dodging.”
2. Border security. While most Americans would agree that this is a critical priority, all that Kerry states is that he will work within the “Smart Borders” agreement with the addition of extra security added to five bridges and one tunnel connecting the United States and Canada. Sounds like Kerry thinks “Smart Borders” is a pretty good thing if all we need to do to prevent terrorist attacks in the U.S. is put a few more police dogs in the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel. What Kerry does not tell you is that “Smart Borders” is an agreement developed and signed by the Bush Administration with Mexico and Canada. “But wait! Bush does not know what he is doing! He is a threat to all civilization.…”
3. Bringing technology to the War on Terror. Kerry says that Bush has failed to ensure all firefighters and emergency personnel have adequate numbers of radios and synchronized radio frequencies to allow for cross communication in the event of an attack. He backs his claim with a poll from 122 mayors from “Cities United for Science Progress” from 2002 that claim that only 20% of the mayors were satisfied that police and firemen had adequate protective equipment for a chemical or biological attack. First, this is an old statistic from a poll conducted just six months after 9/11. What would these same mayors say today in light of the of the $7.8 billion spent in 2003 alone on upgrading the very materials Kerry claims are missing? Second, have you even heard of “Cities United for Science Progress”? What is this group? For all we know these mayors could be a bunch of techno-geeks who will never be happy until their police have Star Trek phasers and tractor beams.
4. Improving communications. Kerry states that he will create a program that will disseminate threat information to state and local officials advising them on the best assessments of terrorist threats through a national communications center. This has already been done. What does John Kerry call the Homeland Security Command Center? Here, Kerry is insulting the intelligence of every American voter. Just because the Command Center is not a household name, he assumes that if he says he will create it, then the voters will think that it does not exist. Next, is Kerry going to claim that he invented the Internet, too?
5. Dismantle the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. This is the Bush program that has created one central location where all intelligence from both home and abroad is grouped together and analyzed. The idea behind the Center was to create an independent agency that would be free of the inter-departmental rivalries that plague our bureaucracy and avoid the critical gaps in communication that enabled the 9/11 hijackers to infiltrate the country. Why John Kerry is against the Center is beyond anyone’s guess. Maybe it is too effective. Sure would be a lot easier for Kerry to be elected there was another 9/11. The argument Kerry uses to justify the breaking up of this effective Center is claiming it will not work due to its reliance on analysis from other agencies and the very bureaucratic rivalries that make the Center necessary. So, rather than dealing with the issue, Kerry proposes giving up. No wonder the leaders of Iran and North Korea love this guy! Kerry’s plan entails a “simplifying of the bureaucratic charts.” All right, now stop laughing, this is serious. When in the history of American government, particularly under a liberal Administration has a bureaucracy ever been “simplified”? Bureaucrats are like rabbits: all they do is breed and consume resources. Not to mention the fact that the Federal bureaucracy is unionized. Remember when Bush tried to “simplify the bureaucratic charts” as he created the Department of Homeland Defense and wanted to evaluate bureaucrats based on their performance? Congress surrendered faster than the Iraqi Republican Guard when the Federal workers’ unions began to fear that they might be held accountable for their actions. How does John plan to make the same changes against the will of one of his core constituencies? The answer is simple: Kerry plans to do nothing.
Warning! The really stupid ideas start here. For those of you who are easily offended by pretentious patronizing may wish to skip to the end.
Finally, Kerry proposes a few ideas of his own on how to improve Homeland Security. Kerry speaks about how the 9/11 terrorists were able to travel the county undetected due to the fact that they had purchased fake drivers’ licenses in Virginia. Now, in order to stop the threat of terrorist sleeper cells living in our communities, John Kerry says that he will require state governments to improve their state identification cards with enhanced anti-counterfeiting features. Well, thank goodness! We can all sleep sounder knowing that all our I.D.’s have a holographic strip. Is Kerry trying to stop international terrorism or bust a frat party?
Kerry’s next idea is even more ridiculous. He proposes that he will combat nuclear proliferation by appointing a special envoy who will travel about the world buying nuclear materials on the black market to destroy them. Call me a skeptic, but are not the proliferaters of WMDs generally hostile to the United States? The most likely result of this plan would be where the suppliers of WMDs to rogue states would sell the United States a portion of their nuclear material and then put the remainder on the market for their terrorist clients at an inflated price. Third World tyrants would still get their weapons and the American tax payer would foot the bill. The only parties to benefit from this plan are those who actually do the selling of the WMDs. Maybe this is a good idea in Fantasy Land, but most Americans do not relish the thought of our government engaging in a bidding war with international criminals.
And last, the granddaddy of them all. Kerry says that he will “build bridges to the Arab and Islamic world by supporting and assisting human rights groups, independent media, and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture.” This is just flat out stupid. Is John Kerry completely disconnected to the real world? Does he not realize the main obstacle to democracy taking root in the Moslem world is the fact that these organizations he wants to support do not exist? Not only do they not exist, but they are foreign to the culture of that part of the world and repressed by our friends and foes alike in the region. Democracy in the Islamic world can happen, but only if the repressive regimes that control these nations are removed. To sit back and take a passive stance like the one suggested by Kerry will do nothing but maintain the status quo in the region and doom America to decades of terrorist threats.
John Kerry has no strategy for Homeland Security or the War on Terror. He has only watered down President Bush’s current plan and added a few goofy twists of his own to try to confuse the voters. The basic difference between the two policies is that Kerry places all the focus on the home front and nothing in the larger theater of the War. He wants to “improve” our ability to respond to the effects of a terrorist attack on our soil, but is unwilling to do anything to prevent one. John Kerry criticizes Bush for the fact that our troops are fighting terrorists in Iraq. Based on his plan for the War on Terror, Kerry would evidently prefer to fight them in New York.
My suggestion is that Kerry adopt a new slogan for his campaign that better fits his overall Homeland Security goals: Support John “Who Cares About The War on Terror So Long as You Have a Nationally Sponsored Health Care Hospital to Go to After Your Bus is Blown Up” Kerry for President. |
