At the bottom of my post is the idea that people can pursue justice without blowing the hell out of everything in their path. You think that's naive? Fine.

I'm up to my ankles in the hair I've pulled out of my own head trying to get an answer to this question from somebody--ANYBODY.

For God's sake, HOW?

Looking for a VERB here.

What do I get? Vague abstractions. More effective. More sensitive. More cooperative. Pursue justice. War is bad for children and other living things. Grudging posts about it "not being my job to think of these things." Some have proposed fantasies about small groups of special forces going in and magically plinking out the bad guys without hurting anyone else. Impossible, but at least there's a verb there.

"Pursue justice" doesn't mean anything. It's a null sentence, along the lines of "support goodness." There isn't any action there.

Bush has a far-reaching idea: that if you can create democracies where tyrannies were before, then the roots of terrorism and/or military aggression will wither. Maybe it's a naive idea, and you can make a valid case that we're feeling our way through it somewhat clumsily, but it's a fact that prosperous democracies tend to be peaceful. You can argue that it worked in Japan and Germany. It's sure been a long time since anyone worried about Japan and Germany invading anyone.

At least it's a plan.

There are terrorists based in thugocracies around the world. Iran and Syria are both breeding them and harboring them. Saudi Arabia has enclaves. African nations have terror camps. Authoritarian nations, largely Muslim, with radical Islamists wrapped around their cores and educating generation after generation of haters.

We are dealing with monsters. If the Soviet Union had been run by Islamic fundamentalists, rather than people who were largely Western and liked living comfortable lives without violence intruding, we would not have won the Cold War without violence.

This election is largely about this problem. Kerry's got nothing other than what's already being tried.

You can argue with a guy who's trying to dig out of a prison cell with a spoon, but unless you've got a shovel, I'm not sure it's all that productive.