SOFT ON TERROR, SOFT ON NATIONAL SECURITY
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
© 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc.
The Democratic Party's presidential front-runner, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has pledged that if elected he will abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for three-and-one-half years of mistakes by the Bush administration.
In a sweeping foreign-policy address to the Council on Foreign Relations in December, Kerry called the U.S. war on terror as conceived and led by President Bush "the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history."
Kerry's remarks were widely praised by journalists. The Associated Press headlined its report on his speech, "Kerry Vows to Repair Foreign Relations." The Knight Ridder news service noted that the new focus on foreign policy "plays to Kerry's strength." None of the major U.S. dailies found Kerry's unusually strident language at all inappropriate.