Adding it up

Thomas Friedman has a very good editorial today at the New York Times.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.

. . . That's why Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about - that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.

He's not wrong. More and more this war seems to have taken on totemistic significance in Republican rhetoric. September 11th changed everything we are told again and again, and, coincidently enough, it changed everything in such a way as to invalidate liberalism forever. Or so we are told.

Anyway it's a good article.