"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''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.''
The Bush/Cheney campaign seized upon this immediately, declaring Kerry's position "naive and dangerous, as was Senator Kerry's reluctance earlier this year to call the war on terror an actual war."
The most egregious offense of the Bush campaign was taking these remarks out of context. They know the importance of short, simple, easily understood catch phrases. They also know that most people in this country will never read the entire article (HERE) or attempt to understand what Kerry was saying.
The truth, as most thinking people know, is that terror is a tactic, not a country. You cannot make war on a tactic. There will always be people who rob, steal and murder. Therefore, any "war on crime" can never be won. The best we can hope for is to reduce it to a level where it is under control, and it is not threatening people's lives every day. The same is true of terror. There will always be someone who is willing to put a bomb under someone's car or lob a molotov cocktail into their house to advance their agendas. You can never completely eliminate these kinds of people, the best you can hope for is to control it so that it's not a constant threat. So, the "war on terror", like the "war on crime", is one that will go on forever. So when Bush talks about "winning the war on terror", he is the one being naive. Hopefully the American people will see through this rhetoric and assess the problem in more realistic terms than has Mr. Cheney. I guess he missed the part of Kerry's comment that included the phrase "it's something that you continue to fight".
Later in the article, the author describes Kerry's plan:
"Kerry's view, that the 21st century will be defined by the organized world's struggle against agents of chaos and lawlessness, might be the beginning of a compelling vision. The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them, seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitably have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism."
