Nuisance

OK, first question, is there anybody out there who thinks, barring the Second Coming, we are going to totally eliminate all terrorists? If you do please post in the comments section. Now bear in mind I'm not asking you to argue with the premise of my question; I'm simply asking if you think we can eliminate all terrorists?

If you do think that we can eliminate all terrorists I would ask you to consider the following. Terrorism is a tactic not an organizational characteristic. Other than a few psychos, most people don't join a terrorist organization to become terrorists. They join a terrorist organization to promote their political agenda (say freeing the Palestinians or protecting the unborn) and then select terrorism as a tactic to further that agenda. How do you win a war against a tactic?

This is all related to a comment Senator Kerry made last week, that I'm sure you've all heard.

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. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.

Tony Blankley takes on this comment and puts it in the context of the intra-organization fights in the Bush Administration. Specifically the CIA and the State Department are treasonous dogs for disagree with President Bush. Basically, Kerry is expressing the State Department and CIA's opinion, and they are all wrong.

The problem is nuance. The metaphor of a war against terrorism is so powerful that it's hard to abandon or even minimize. So when Kerry talks about fighting Terrorism using all the weapons in our arsenal (including military options, but also including diplomatic tools and law enforcement agencies), Blankley sees that as weakness, and believes that such a procedure would lead to total capitulation.

At the minimum such a policy would tend to drive us to withdraw from the world as instructed by bin Laden or his successors. Certainly we would abandon Israel. Probably we would abandon the Middle East oil fields to the control by the terrorist regime. Doubtlessly we would have to pay tribute (foreign aid) to beneficiaries designated by the terrorists in "compensation for our past abuses." We might well try to tamp down the export of our Hollywood, MTV culture to appease the terrorist's sensitivities. Perhaps we would have to offer special dispensations to Islamic Americans.

Yep. I suggest you try to line this future up along side Senator Kerry's performance at the debates. See if he sounds this weak.

But of course this is what the Republicans want the election to be about. It can't be about President Bush's performance because there isn't much there to praise (even his supporters admit that while his programs are definitely going to pay off, they haven't yet. The election can't be about the real John Kerry. So it has to be about a caricature of John Kerry.