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re: The war on thought
Tom Brosz — (archived)

No, what I did was cut through the crap and distill it down to where it has become very difficult to blow clouds of smoke at the issue. Did I make any factual errors? Any arguments with my interpretation of bin Laden's demands?

I brought up the campaign because the recent campaign illustrates the core of the current issue. Bush, for better or worse, took an active course of action against terrorism, one which has extinction of the terrorists and the conditions that produce them as its goal. That he has made mistakes is inarguable. As just one example, Saudi Arabia harbors much of the current terrorist-breeding system, whether its rulers approve or not. What has been done about this? That it cost us more lives and money than sitting and endlessly bitching in the U.N. chambers is also inarguable.

Kerry, perhaps like you, believed that there was some "middle road," some moderate approach, some "better idea," some more nuanced and thoughtful way of addressing the situation, preferably without violence, and preferably in committee, since we all know that no individual nation could come up with the right answer on its own.

When pressed on details, Kerry spazzed like a deer in the headlights. You see, some answers actually are binary. Like life and death. I listed bin Laden's demands to make the point that the subset of his worldview and the subset of the worldview of the civilized West has NO intersection. Now what?

If you've got some real ideas, run them out. "We could do better than Bush has" is easy enough to say.

And if you are allergic to discussing alternatives to past actions, we aren't going to get very far. I think it's critical to think about what Gore might have done. Or Kerry. Or Clinton. Those are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a few years, the Democrats are going to be running against the Republicans for president, and I seriously doubt the War on Terror will be over by then. They damn well better have some real alternatives by then, instead of just throwing crap at Republicans.

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