President Bush for a safer world - Originally published on Oct. 19.

Washington Times ^ | November 1, 2004 | editorial

[Former Military Chick]

This is not a happy election season. Our nation is mortally threatened and deeply divided. We are divided not only by party affiliation, but by different visions of the nature of the threat and the means of defeating it. Each candidate embodies in his personality and public presentation these conflicting visions.

President George W. Bush sees the rise of global Islamist terrorism as an evil force and mortal threat, the causes of which must be extirpated, root and branch, in a global struggle. He believes that it is insufficient to merely track down the existing terrorists and contain the rogue states with capacity for weapons of mass destruction that may support them. Rather, he proposes (and he has begun to act upon the belief in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, among other places) to transform — by military means if necessary — the sick societies of the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia that have given rise to the appeal of terrorism.

Sen. John F. Kerry, while recognizing the malignant nature of the terrorists, sees that threat, or at least the solution to it, as somewhat less thoroughgoing. He has argued that if inspections had been continued in Iraq and sanctions had been maintained, then regime change by military force would have been unnecessary.

Mr. Bush, implicitly, has seen the danger of further exacerbating Arab street passions (and thus increasing short-term recruitment potential for terrorists) as a price worth paying (if necessary) to move forward the larger project of democratic or other benign transformation. Mr. Kerry has specifically cited such exacerbations as a reason why the Iraq war was unwise.

[Former Military Chick]

It sure is worth repeating.