Interesting article from the NY

Interesting article from the NY Times Magazine on Kerry's foreign policy.

Here are the highlights:

But when you listen carefully to what Bush and Kerry say,
it becomes clear that the differences between them are more profound
than the matter of who can be more effective in achieving the same
ends. Bush casts the war on terror as a vast struggle that is likely to
go on indefinitely, or at least as long as radical Islam commands
fealty in regions of the world. In a rare moment of either candor or
carelessness, or perhaps both, Bush told Matt Lauer on the ''Today''
show in August that he didn't think the United States could actually
triumph in the war on terror in the foreseeable future. ''I don't think
you can win it,'' he said -- a statement that he and his aides tried to
disown but that had the ring of sincerity to it. He and other members
of his administration have said that Americans should expect to be
attacked again, and that the constant shadow of danger that hangs over
major cities like New York and Washington is the cost of freedom. In
his rhetoric, Bush suggests that terrorism for this generation of
Americans is and should be an overwhelming and frightening reality.
When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again,
he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview.
''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.'
This analogy struck me as remarkable, if only because it seemed to
throw down a big orange marker between Kerry's philosophy and the
president's. Kerry, a former prosecutor, was suggesting that the war,
if one could call it that, was, if not winnable, then at least
controllable. If mobsters could be chased into the back rooms of seedy
clubs, then so, too, could terrorists be sent scurrying for their lives
into remote caves where they wouldn't harm us. Bush had continually
cast himself as the optimist in the race, asserting that he alone saw
the liberating potential of American might, and yet his dark vision of
unending war suddenly seemed far less hopeful than Kerry's notion that
all of this horror -- planes flying into buildings, anxiety about
suicide bombers and chemicals in the subway -- could somehow be made to
recede until it was barely in our thoughts. {...}The challenge of
beating back these nonstate actors -- not just Islamic terrorists but
all kinds of rogue forces -- is what Kerry meant by ''the dark side of
globalization.'' He came closest to articulating this as an actual
foreign-policy vision in a speech he gave at U.C.L.A. last February. ''The
war on terror is not a clash of civilizations,'' he said then. ''It is
a clash of civilization against chaos, of the best hopes of humanity
against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.'' This stands in
significant contrast to the Bush doctrine, which holds that the war on
terror, if not exactly a clash of civilizations, is nonetheless a
struggle between those states that would promote terrorism and those
that would exterminate it. Bush, like Kerry, accepts the premise that
America is endangered mainly by a new kind of adversary that claims no
state or political entity as its own. But he does not accept the idea
that those adversaries can ultimately survive and operate independently
of states; in fact, he asserts that terrorist groups are inevitably the
subsidiaries of irresponsible regimes. ''We must be prepared to stop
rogue states and their terrorist clients,'' the National Security
Strategy said, in a typical passage, ''before they are able to threaten
or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our
allies and friends.'' {...}By singling out three states in particular-
Iraq, North Korea and Iran -- as an ''axis of evil,'' and by invading
Iraq on the premise that it did (or at least might) sponsor terrorism,
Bush cemented the idea that his war on terror is a war against those
states that, in the president's words, are not with us but against us.
Many of Bush's advisers spent their careers steeped in cold-war
strategy, and their foreign policy is deeply rooted in the idea that
states are the only consequential actors on the world stage, and that
they can -- and should -- be forced to exercise control over the
violent groups that take root within their borders. Kerry's view, on the other hand, suggests that it is the very
premise of civilized states, rather than any one ideology, that is
under attack. And no one state, acting alone, can possibly have much
impact on the threat, because terrorists will always be able to move
around, shelter their money and connect in cyberspace; there are no
capitals for a superpower like the United States to bomb, no
ambassadors to recall, no economies to sanction. The U.S. military
searches for bin Laden, the Russians hunt for the Chechen terrorist
Shamil Basayev and the Israelis fire missiles at Hamas bomb makers; in
Kerry's world, these disparate terrorist elements make up a loosely
affiliated network of diabolical villains, more connected to one
another by tactics and ideology than they are to any one state sponsor.
The conflict, in Kerry's formulation, pits the forces of order versus
the forces of chaos, and only a unified community of nations can ensure
that order prevails. One can infer from this that if Kerry were able to speak less
guardedly, in a less treacherous atmosphere than a political campaign,
he might say, as some of his advisers do, that we are not in an actual
war on terror. Wars are fought between states or between factions vying
for control of a state; Al Qaeda and its many offspring are neither. If
Kerry's foreign-policy frame is correct, then law enforcement probably
is the most important, though not the only, strategy you can employ
against such forces, who need passports and bank accounts and weapons
in order to survive and flourish. Such a theory suggests that, in
our grief and fury, we have overrated the military threat posed by Al
Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a criminal
enterprise, albeit a devastatingly sophisticated and global one, into
the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin -- and thus conferring
on the jihadists a kind of stature that might actually work in their
favor, enabling them to attract more donations and more recruits.
{...}He would begin, if sworn into office, by going immediately to
the United Nations to deliver a speech recasting American foreign
policy. Whereas Bush has branded North Korea ''evil'' and refuses to
negotiate head on with its authoritarian regime, Kerry would open
bilateral talks over its burgeoning nuclear program. Similarly, he has
said he would rally other nations behind sanctions against Iran if that
country refuses to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Kerry envisions
appointing a top-level envoy to restart the Middle East peace process,
and he's intent on getting India and Pakistan to adopt key provisions
of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (One place where Kerry vows to
take a harder line than Bush is Pakistan, where Bush has embraced the
military ruler Pervez Musharraf, and where Kerry sees a haven for chaos
in the vast and lawless region on the border with Afghanistan.) In all
of this, Kerry intends to use as leverage America's considerable
capacity for economic aid; a Kerry adviser told me, only slightly in
jest, that Kerry's most tempting fantasy is to attend the G-8 summit.
{...}When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was
surprised. I assumed everyone in America -- and certainly in Washington
-- had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly
cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap
opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was
that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed
or talked about terrorism -- which is exactly why he has come across,
to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have
understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he
may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he
says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more
effective in fighting terrorists.{...}

{my emphasis)
So, according to Kerry there isn't a war on terror, per se, but rather
an overlarge, yet "myopic" response to the attacks on 9/11. Not a clash
of civilizations but rather a "clash of civilization against chaos." A
more effective way of dealing with those chaos-inducing terrorists
who'd like to kill us is by serving them with indictments, even though,
dare I say it
when Clinton did the same damn thing it didn't really serve as a
deterrent to future attacks, ya dig?
He, basically, thinks it will all just go away if a law enforcement
tack is taken. Americans will rest easy, they'll go to bed at night not
worrying about waking up to see planes slamming into tall buildings.
Because, of course, unless you have him out there chatting up world
leaders and mullahs and doing his diplomacy bit, you don't have the
"law" part of "law and order," do you? Gotta have that law. It's
crucial. Because everyone respects laws, don't they? I mean, the UN is just a friggin' palace of virtue, right? It has to be. It's the
UN after all. Al-Qaeda is just like organized crime, only with rags on
their heads rather than fedoras. There's no difference between thugs,
after all.
Christ.
You want more attacks? By all means, vote for Kerry. If he should win,
however, I don't want to hear one goddamn word out of anyone about why
did this happen? how can we prevent it from happening again? why do
they hate us so much when we took the warm-friendly-bunny approach to
foreign policy? You either get it or you don't. If you don't, and
you choose to vote for Kerry, well, you'd better keep your trap shut
the next time we're attacked. I don't want to hear your whining.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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