Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Muddled message on the war

Here's Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe:

"BRING IT ON" is the mantra of John Kerry's presidential campaign. So why complain when President Bush does just that, with campaign commercials that portray images of the destroyed World Trade Center?

Foreign policy and national security is the debate that Kerry says he wants; if so, Sept. 11 is where the debate begins. The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field were a declaration of war. The country's foreign policy and national security debate runs directly from those ashes and ruins to America's war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Families of 9/11 victims bear a special, private burden from that terrible day, but they do not own it. The country respects their individual losses, but during a presidential campaign it cannot be expected to separate the politics from the events of Sept. 11. Are we fighting the right enemy the right way? Those questions, along with questions about Bush economic policies, lie at the crux of the Democratic challenge to Bush's reelection. Kerry and the rest of the Democratic pack of now-vanquished challengers have been asking them for more than a year.

They are fair, necessary, political questions that deserve answers.
. . . . . . . .
Kerry's specific criticism of the Iraq war remains difficult to follow. It is about "the rush to war," not the fact that the country remains at war. During the Feb. 26 debate, Kerry seemed to be saying what Bush is saying -- that the Iraq war is key to the "war on terror." That likely explains why the Kerry campaign is anxious to keep Bush on the defensive, with silly criticisms about political advertisements and arrogant plans to send a delegation to Iraq to assess the situation there.

Read the whole thing.

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