THE KERRY DOCTRINE
By now we have all heard about the Bush doctrine of "pre-emption" in the war against the terrorists. It is simply a reversal
of our nation’s prior doctrine of "reaction" in which terrorist attacks were dealt with ‘after the fact’
in the same way that a bank robbery, mugging, rape or murder were treated. In the past, each instance of terrorism led to
a search for the "guilty parties" who would then be put on trial like common criminals and hopefully convicted and sentenced
to some form of punishment. Admittedly, in some instances this was not an altogether unreasonable means of dealing with the
problem, as with the small coterie of malcontents including Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh who had committed one really
big atrocity in Oklahoma City. McVeigh was convicted and put to death. Nichols is in federal prison and will remain there
for the rest of his miserable life.
But when dealing with the radical Islamic terrorists who pulled off the multiple attacks of September 11, 2001 and who
are currently undermining our efforts at restoring order and civility to Iraq, we are faced with a far more serious and wide-spread
problem. More to the point, we are up against a large-scale terrorist network with a well thought-out agenda to be unleashed
over a long period of time, and when you are at war you don’t only target the particular soldier who shoots at you,
what you must do is to consider all members of the enemy’s ranks as viable targets. Like it or not, we are at war with
an implacable enemy and we must act according to the standards of warfare to have any chance of winning. Against such a threat
as the al Queda organization, with its state-sponsored terrorism and sophisticated levels of planning, a doctrine of ‘reaction’
is as pointless and as futile as the late British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s doctrine of appeasement was against
the Nazis some sixty-five years ago.
As there is essentially only one real issue, the war on terrorism, involved in this upcoming national election it is imperative
that we focus on the comparative doctrines of the presidential candidates. [Yes, the economy is also an ‘issue,’
but it is of lesser concern to the public, is now on an upswing under Bush, and Kerry has nothing coherent to say about it
anyway, so it remains a ‘non-issue’ in this election.] We already know the policy set forth by our incumbent president
regarding terrorism, so the question remains ‘what is the prescribed doctrine to be used against our enemies as promulgated
by Senator John F. Kerry?’ It has become increasingly obvious that a Kerry doctrine would consist of a combination of
two already discredited elements of international policy when faced with a determined and well-organized aggressor: ‘reaction’
and ‘appeasement.’
Failing to recognize that the organized network of terrorists who have essentially declared war on the United States and
the Western World have been the recipients of state sponsorship, Kerry describes our efforts in Iraq to remove such sponsorship
as being a "diversion" on the war on terror. He sees no connection between the now defunct regime of Saddam Hussein and the
terrorists who have attacked us. He believes, as do his followers, that if we can only capture Osama bin Laden that by some
miraculous process all of these pesky terrorists will just go away and leave us alone. The fact that we were not invading
any country or provoking any terrorists when we were attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001 is lost on Kerry. The fact
that Saddam’s regime maintained a sprawling terrorist training camp at a place called Salman Pak* just twenty miles
outside of Baghdad is of no consequence to Senator Kerry. The fact that two aircraft were maintained at Salman Pak to be used
as training tools on how to hijack commercial aircraft doesn’t even register on his radar.
The fact that Saddam’s regime had been actively engaged in the development of nuclear weapons for many years and
had never shown any evidence of abandoning such efforts is also of no interest to Senator Kerry. It seems that to Kerry, and
to liberals in general, there is a fundamental disconnect between ‘reality’ and what they really want or don’t
want to believe in. They really don’t want to believe that terrorists have state sponsorship. They really don’t
want to believe that Saddam Hussein was sponsoring terrorists. They really don’t want to believe that he would have
eventually armed those terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. And they really don’t want to believe that ridding
the world of that terrorist-sponsoring regime was necessary.
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