安魂曲
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加入时间: 2004/02/14
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作者：安魂曲 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
How ironic
that perhaps the most reasonable statement by John Kerry, as reported in yesterday's remarkable New York Times Magazine piece, is the one that will used to batter him. On the issue of terrorism, Kerry stated that "we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." I don't understand Kerry to be saying that we should give terrorism the same type and limited level of attention we gave it pre-9/11; rather I think he was providing a realistic, though tone-deaf, assessment of what it is possible to achieve in the war on terror. Like Kerry, I don't expect that we will ever succeed in eliminating terrorism. I doubt whether President Bush believes we will ever do so either; this is probably what he had in mind earlier this year when he expressed skepticism about winning the war on terrorism.
Kerry obviously (and perhaps tellingly) blundered when he compared terrorism to prostitution and illegal gambling, though these are also things that can't be stamped out completely. A better analogy (though still an impolitic one) would have been traffic fatalities. As it happens, my old Dartmouth roommate and CIA anti-terrorism point man Paul Pillar has used this analogy. Each year many people die as a result of automobile accidents. That will always be the case. Similarly, under the best of circumstances, I expect that people, including some Americans, will die each year as the result of acts of terrorism around the world. If we use the correct approach to combating terrorism, for example bringing about regime change in states that have the potential and the propensity to give terrorists what they need to commit mass terror, it is realistic to think that the number can be kept small. Anything better than that is probably beyond our reach.
What appalled me most about Kerry's exchanges with the New York Timesman was his statement that September 11 "didn't change me much at all," but merely "sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing." What things? ''We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days. And that's all about your diplomacy. . . .A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly."
In this passage Kerry is simultaneously (a) blaming American colonialism (or the inability to disassociate ourselves from the colonialist past of the British) for the heightened threat posed by terrorism, (b) claiming that we can end that level of threat through language, outreach, and diplomatic initiatives, and (c) admitting that even an event like 9/11 was insufficient to shake this Carteresque mentality. Irony aside, then, it matters little to me which excerpt from the Times piece the Bush campaign selects for use in battering Kerry.
UPDATE: Few batter more effectively than Rudy Giuliani. Here he uses Kerry's "nuisance" remark to excellent effect.
Posted by deacon at 05:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (3)
Analogies to Terror
John Kerry is rightly being battered for characterizing terrorism, in a best-case scenario, as a "nuisance" like prostitution and gambling, which law enforcement (significantly, not the armed forces) tries to suppress to a reasonable level, but which never entirely goes away. Kerry's characterization is, on its face, repugnant: internet spam is a "nuisance;" terrorism is something far worse, even when it is rare.
One point that I don't think has been emphasized sufficiently, however, is what a terrible analogy prostitution and gambling are to terrorism. The reason why those crimes are notoriously hard to eliminate is that they are victimless. They are consensual acts in which a great many people voluntarily engage. How can Kerry possibly see an analogy to terrorism? Does anyone consent to be murdered by terrorists? Is the relationship between terrorist and victim remotely comparable to that between a gambler and his bookie? Kerry's analogy is insensitive to a degree that is almost unfathomable.
The analogy suggested by Paul Pillar, as quoted by Deacon below, is a little better, but still far off the mark. Paul has compared terrorism to automobile accidents. Terrorism, like car accidents, is a terrible thing that we should try to minimize; but, realistically, we'll never be able to eliminate either terrorism or auto accidents entirely.
But car accidents are an unintended by-product of a constructive activity. The automobile has revolutionized and improved life for billions of people. If we, as individuals, were determined to avoid the risk of automobile accidents, we would avoid riding in cars. But the small risk of accident is one that we voluntarily take, in exchange for the extraordinary mobility and freedom we enjoy, unparalleled in the history of the human race.
Terrorism is not the accidental by-product of a life-enhancing activity. It is a manifestation of pure evil. It may be true that, no matter how strenuous our efforts, someone, somewhere on the globe, will find a way to saw an innocent man's head off with a knife, or blow up a restaurant or night club. But to tolerate such cruelty, as a matter of policy, in the way that we tolerate prostitution or car accidents, should be viewed as utterly unacceptable. The only proper response to the cruel, inhuman terrorist acts that we have witnessed in recent years is white-hot fury. Our goal must be the utter destruction of the bottomless evil of terrorism, not the bureaucratic management of a "nuisance." That John Kerry cannot understand this basic moral fact disqualifies him from a position of leadership in our government.
Posted by Hindrocket at 08:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (6)
I couldn't have said it better. . .
nor did I. Chrenkoff has the right line on John Kerry's terrorism as a nuisance comment:
"John Kerry is right in a sense that terrorism cannot be completely eliminated; the best we can do is to marginalise the phenomenon. But he's wrong that we can ever return to previous normalcy - there is no 'place' to 'get back to' anymore. S11 might not have changed Kerry, but it certainly changed the international state of play. In the past, terrorism was used as a limited tactic to achieve limited objectives (unification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, statehood for the Basques, elimination of the 'Zionist entity' in favour of a Palestinian state); S11 was not the first, but certainly the most emphatic statement that for some, terrorism would now be used as a total tactic in a total war against the West to achieve a totalitarian objective of a global theocratic super-state. Too bad for Kerry that an Islamist genie is out of the bottle now - to turn terrorism back into a nuisance would require us to completely eliminate the spirit that animates al Qaeda and its cheerleaders and followers. And that will be neither easy nor quick."
Posted by deacon at 08:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBack (1)
作者：安魂曲 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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