On how to win the war on terrorism

This is another reply to comments in the previous post, and the reply got too long, so I figured I'd just throw it on the main page. (I have the power!)

How will Kerry deal with an attack? Well, it depends on the attack and the circumstances. If there is a good reason to hit Iran and he finds that hitting them would be the best possible solution, then I'm sure he would. Much like I would assume anyone would. Even I will grant that Bush (thanks to Colin Powell) generally dealt well with the situation post-9/11. It was when they started shifting away resources from Afghanistan towards Iraq, letting Al Qaeda forces and Caliban forces regroup that he began to lose the war. (note: I said BEGAN to, I still think we can win... it's just a lot harder now) Kerry too supported the War in Afghanistan. I don't think there's too much sunshine between the way they would deal with an immediate crisis.

The issue of the nature of the enemy is fair one, but irrelevant to choosing who our leader is. I don't believe either Bush nor Kerry have misconceptions on this. The people who hit us, the people in Al Qaeda, are fanatics, they are perverting Islam for their own purpose, and are wholly incompatible with a free world. I also agree with your description of those who are involved in Al Qaeda as cultists. I'm also glad we are differentiating between those we can win over, from the billions of peaceful followers of Islam from those we cannot.

The question becomes how do we best defeat them in the long term. Obviously, military must play a role, a large role in fact. We must fight them where they are. In large, Al Qaeda was not Iraq, but now they are (*). That's our fault, but we must keep up our efforts there thanks to our mistake. Kerry does not disagree with that. In fact, he took flack for that position in the Democratic primaries because he wasn't willing to say return the troops now. Unfortunately, it's an irresponsible position today to say we need to get our troops out immediately, and will lead to a true terrorist state in the mold that Afghanistan used to be. However, clearly, if we can lighten the load on the American efforts there, it would be WONDERFUL. Especially, it would be wonderful to reduce the incredible burden we are placing on our reservists, who didn't sign up for this, and are getting the royal shaft from this administration. At the very least, let's give the ones activated the full benefits, pay and otherwise, or a normal soldier who enlisted. Bush has tried to share the burden, but even with the amazing pay offs and bribes we've offered to other nations to join our “coalition”, we have had few takers. The reality is the world hates us pretty badly right now. With Kerry this might abate. Does that mean that we should vote based on how the world thinks of our leader? Of course not. There are many many perfectly good reasons independent of that to choose Kerry over Bush.

We must do what we can to fight the terrorists in every way possible, but one of the key ways is to reduce the demand for it. People join cults for a variety of reasons, amongst them despair, low self-esteem, etc. A foreign policy based on Barney the dinosaur philosophy is laughable, but we can reduce the misery that might lead people to latch onto the false promises of these lunatics. We can reduce our dependency on foreign oil, which means that we don't have to prop up these corrupt governments everywhere which in turn festers hatred towards us. (witness Iran in the late 1970s) We can act decide to award contracts to rebuild countries to natives of the country itself. Part of the scandal of Halliburton getting no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq is that the Iraqis could do the rebuilding themselves! Iraq was/is a fairly advanced society with architects, and engineers. Had we given contracts to Iraqis, the unemployment would have gone down and the Iraqis would see us much more like the Western Europeans saw us after the World War when we helped them rebuild Europe. That in turn would give people in Iraq less reason to listen to and join the terrorists who have been flooding into Iraq since we invaded.

To win we're going to need to fight terrorism on all fronts. We need to fight on the military front, and we must do what we can to help give people who could turn to terrorism hope that they can make something better. We did that (for the most part) during the Cold War, and it ended up working pretty well. Western Europe did not fall to communism. Again, I want to win in this struggle. We cannot allow the great dream of freedom to die. I think there's a much better chance that Kerry would focus on all the necessary fronts. Can I prove it? No, I cannot prove it, but the evidence looks pretty good. I can say for sure that Bush has failed pretty miserably. Al Qaeda is getting stronger again. North Korea and Iran both likely have real WMDs. Iraq is in chaos, and could easily become a fundamentalist theocracy in the mold of Iran, hating us with a passion. Afghanistan has the Taliban starting to reenter their government, and the central government barely having control of Kabul. Most of the nation is controlled by the warlords, many (or most) of whom have no interest in spreading freedom or liberty. We must do better, we must win this.

On the other issue brought up, the commenter is correct, Kerry claiming he voted for the Helms-Burton act in 1996 is another case of “voting for it before I voted against it”. He did vote for the bill, an earlier version of it. He found amendments on the final version of the bill unpalatable, so he voted against that version. That's not unusual in Congress to have unrelated or idiotic amendments and riders added to a bill which make something good entirely heinous. (you have no idea how silly things get, and indeed, this is how pork enters bills) You can draft a bill saying that you're going to give California $100 million dollars a year to refund the costs for undocumented immigrants and then have an amendment added which then says that companies that relocate to other nations will have their equipment movement costs refunded by our government. (this is a hypothetical, but the real situations are even sillier) What you end up with is a politician must make a choice as to which is worse, voting against this means you're against paying back California for its burden in the undocumented workers, and voting for this means you're for companies moving jobs overseas. Trust me, this is par for the course. Of course, Bush doesn't have anywhere near as much of a record you can go through for this. He's been involved in politics for 10 years exactly, and always in an executive branch. That all said, Kerry shouldn't have said what he said in this case, but let's not be naive about the nature of Congress here.

Yes, I hope to post a non-political screed sometime as well. (if you are still reading by now then you probably are REALLY bored)

(* I edited that line to fix a misstatement on my part)