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Kerry: Terror Threat Exaggerated
Tom Brokaw asked John Kerry an excellent question during last night's South Carolina debate:
Robert Kagan, who writes about these issues a great deal from the Carnegie Institute for Peace, has written recently that Europeans believe that the Bush administration has exaggerated the threat of terrorism, and the Bush administration believes that the Europeans simply don't get it. Who is right?
The Democratic front-runner's response should give pause to anyone who cares about national security. Here's the exchange that ensued:
Kerry: I think it's somewhere in between. I think that there has been an exaggeration and there has been a refocusing--
Brokaw: Where has the exaggeration been in the threat on terrorism?
Kerry: Well, 45 minutes deployment of weapons of mass destruction, No. 1. Aerial vehicles to be able to deliver materials of mass destruction, No. 2. I mean, I--nuclear weapons, No. 3. I could run a long list of clear misleading, clear exaggeration. The linkage to Al Qaida, No. 4.
That said, they are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. The war on terror is less--it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time. And we will need the best-trained and the most well-equipped and the most capable military, such as we have today.
But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world--the very thing this administration is worst at. And most importantly, the war on terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven't embraced, because otherwise we're inviting a clash of civilizations.
Let's go through this step by step. Kerry first agrees, at least in part, with the "European" view that America is exaggerating the threat of terrorism. It was left to John Edwards later to state the obvious: "It's just hard for me to see how you can say there's an exaggeration when thousands of people lost their lives on September the 11th." You'd think Kerry would have more sensitivity on this subject, given that both the planes that the terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center took off from his home state.
An incredulous Brokaw interrupts Kerry to ask for examples. Kerry list four purported exaggerations of the terror threat, all of which actually have to do with Iraq. Now, we thought the party line was that Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror and was just a "distraction."
Kerry then goes on to outline his philosophy about fighting terrorism. The war on terror, in his view, isn't really a war at all; it's chiefly a matter for intelligence and police agencies. Military action is called for only "occasionally"--exactly the view that prevailed before Sept. 11. Kerry, it seems, has learned nothing from that day's attacks.
Finally, Kerry complains that the U.S. has not entered into "an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally." Yet that is precisely what we are now doing in Iraq. And once again, we see Kerry is all over the map on this stuff. In October 2002 he voted in favor of a war he now denounces. And in October 2003 he voted to defund the troops and the reconstruction effort, yet now he demands "an engagement in the Middle East."
Does Kerry have the ability to make a decision and stick by it? Is it possible to be an effective leader without this capacity?
[WSJ]
2:33:13 PM 
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