Alan hit my reasoning pretty squarely on the head: Kerry (if I understand him correctly) would go forward with the same policies we’ve used for 30 years. Those policies aren’t bad, per se, they were followed by Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and in some respects Bush II. However, the 30 year track record has shown that they don’t stamp out terrorism.

Yes, freezing terrorist assets, suspending foreign aid, and bombing training camps have all made it harder to operate a terrorist organization. But, then again, Bin Laden used to regularly meet with heads of state. Arresting people who trained or supplied suicide bombers after they’ve attacked the Cole makes us feel better, but doesn’t repair the ship, nor does it really seem to have an effect on future bombing runs. They aren’t bad ideas, but they don’t seem to be enough.

Has Bush’s strategy of ending countries that support terrorism stamped out terrorism? Not yet, but why not give it 30 years?

***
And to Anon (“Incidentally – does everyone know that one country attacking another for regime change is illegal under international law?”), wars of agression are illegal under international law. However, even the UN charter (which begins, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”), has a whole chapter on UN-approved wars (Chapter VII). The actual cease fire conditions for the first Gulf War was one of the various Security Council resolutions that Iraq violated. Because Iraq continually violated the cease fire, the UN passed another resolution approving use of force by member nations without a need to ask for permission from the Security Council. The wording used didn’t limit the force to anything in particular.

Clinton used this permission to expand the no-fly zone, and to attack military targets outside of the no-fly zone. The UN never complained about this use of force.

After ten years, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which declared Iraq in “material breach” of the cease-fire, meaning the US was already pre-approved to use whatever force it thought necessary. Since everything short of an invasion had been tried, and since Iraq remained in material breach, it appeared that the only way to get lasting compliance was to invade and remove the regime.

I can’t undestand why the invasion looked unfair to Kofi Anan. Saddam spent ten years declaring he was at war with the US, the UN believed him enough to authorize US force whenever Iraq breached the cease fire, and Iraq was in clear violation of the cease fire since it actively tried to kill US soldiers patrolling the no-fly zone.

Tom: It wasn’t my quote but the reasoning, IMHO, goes like this.

1. The Bush doctrine goes against decades of US policy. Kerry wants to stay with the old way of doing things. The irony of a republican being “progressive” and a democrat being “reactionary” is interesting.
2. Past US policy worked in situations where those involved share our world view.
3. After 9/11, the world realized that the enemy did not share our world view and had a different set of motivations (e.g. shame, intolerance for those outside the Islamic nation, martyrdom)
4. The only policy that has worked is strength through action and not words. This is similar to the fight in WWII against totalitarian ideologies. The only way to win against an ideology that does not tolerate the existence of competing ideologies is to prove its failure. Negotiating and sanctions allow the ideology to survive and hence succeed in a sense. In fact, it promotes them because they see weakness in what we see as moral “strength”.

It all comes down to your understanding of your enemy. To quote Lao Tzu (badly) – if you do not know your enemy, you will not win the war.

I really want to understand this quote, why do you really think George Bush’s ways would be more effective?

Here is a person who launched a pre-emptive strike with insufficient evidence, that is immoral to say the least. 100,000 civilians might have died because he wanted to effect regime change?? The military is now mired in guerilla warfare – and let me ask you, would you lie down and be counted if someone was occupying this country?

Incidentally – does everyone know that one country attacking another for regime change is illegal under international law? And that makes sense – otherwise, if one leader did not like the leadership style of another – does that now mean they can just take them out?

The deficit is frightening and will create national and global economic instability – would you run a company this deep into debt? I don’t think so. And it’s going to boomerang back. I haven’t heard of anyone who has taken record surpluses and squandered them in such a reckless fashion. And I’m seeing the results of this on the ground. Did small-town America get income tax cuts? Yes. But then everyone’s PROPERTY Taxes went up by – get this – 25% – why? Because the Feds cut funding for the school programs and therefore the towns had to pick them up!

If you want to to talk security, does it occur to you that 9/11 need not have happened if the Clinton counter-terrorism team had been listened to? Bush is a person who completely IGNORED the work of the President and the country pre-9/11 and then went about radical action post 9/11 that has put us and the rest of the world in grave danger and made everyone absolutely divided. How does he still have this kind of support?

This is not a diatribe – I am at a complete and utter loss to understand it. Do tell…

1. Newsweek has consistently polled very oddly, out of sync with other polls from what I have seen. This is the first poll I have heard of that showed bin Laden helping the Bush team. Zogby, Rasmussen, and the Washington Post poll, plus Fox News, showed if anything a decline for the President in the day following the release of the video.

2. This makes sense. The last thing the President wanted was to have Osama pop up on America’s TVs right after Bush contradicted himself about saying he wasn’t concerned about him. This is the guy who was able to “run but not hide” after all, and yet there he is looking good and healthy and clearly not running or hiding. “Dead or Alive” the President promised almost three years ago. Three years later, he is most certainly neither dead or captured. Did you see how spooked the President looked on that tarmac when he gave his statement on Friday? Maybe he was believing his own propaganda and thought Osama was out of the picture.

3. This cannot help Republicans other than those so Red-state-of-minded that anything that happens means “George Bush is a leader,” and frankly those people could see Bush sticking up a bank and think he’s a great guy. They were never going to change their votes no matter what happened. If you’ve read the transcript (part of it on CNN here:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/bin.laden.transcript/ )
you know how stupid it makes Bush look. If anything, it hurts the Republicans. The only way it might not is because the cable talking heads repeatedly said, “Wow, this sure could help Bush,” thereby influencing people to think that way. No one who reads the transcript will think it helps Bush.

4. Osama deserves to die for his criminal acts. There is no negotiatiating with such people. Despite that, his words carry meaning. It would be well for the Bush team to stop lying to us that “he hates our freedom” (something I always knew to be a lie), and deal with the reality of the situation. Bin Laden is an idealogue who was willing to stick with principle even at the cost of thousands of lives. Such people are dangerous for that very reason. But the point is, he is not a madman lashly out blindly. He had a reason for what he did, and the smart thing is to start dealing with those reasons in the underlying situation rather than just say he’s a madman. Over the next few years, America will have a chance to rethink its approach to Middle East relations. If we get it right, we may minimize terrorist acts against us to only a few loose cannons who really are madmans. If we get it wrong, we’ll have those loose cannons to deal with AND all the idealogues with their followers. It’s up to us. But as for Osama himself, game over. He doesn’t get the right to be a part of any negotiations. He goes to jail or gets killed.

5. Finally, yes, getting bin Laden is priority #1 in Jan. 2005. If only it had been priority #1 in Jan. 2003 we might have made some progress.

“So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot Act under the pretences of fighting terrorism.”

“In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors and did not forget to import expertise in election fraud from the regions presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.”

“All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.”