"There’s no reason why we have to tolerate global terrorism, just like there’s no reason to tolerate organized crime," writes Rudy Giuliani in a devastating analysis over at Bush/Cheney '04 of Candidate Kerry's failure to understand the terrorist threat:
For some time, and including when I spoke at the Republican Convention, I’ve wondered exactly what John Kerry’s approach would be to terrorism, and I’ve wondered whether he had the conviction, the determination, and the focus, and the correct worldview to conduct a successful war against terrorism. And his quotations in the New York Times yesterday make it clear that he lacks that kind of committed view of the world. In fact, his comments are kind of extraordinary, particularly since he thinks we used to before September 11 live in a relatively safe world. He says we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.
I’m wondering exactly when Senator Kerry thought they were just a nuisance. Maybe when they attacked the USS Cole? Or when they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993? Or when they slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972? Or killed Leon Klinghoffer by throwing him overboard? Or the innumerable number of terrorist acts that they committed in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, leading up to September 11?
This is so different from the President’s view and my own, which is in those days, when we were fooling ourselves about the danger of terrorism, we were actually in the greatest danger. When you don’t confront correctly and view realistically the danger that you face, that’s when you’re at the greatest risk When you at least realize the danger and you begin to confront it, then you begin to become safer. And for him to say that in the good old days -- I’m assuming he means the 90s and the 80s and the 70s -- they were just a nuisance, this really begins to explain a lot of his inconsistent positions on how to deal with it because he’s not defining it correctly.
*The "Broken Windows" theory, applied with transformative effect by Mayor Giuliani to NYC: "You had to pay attention to small things, otherwise they would get out of control and become much worse." That would be what Senator Kerry considers a "nuisance" we must put up with. Isn't that exactly what happened with terrorism, from Leon Klinghoffer on down? We were shocked at each terrorist act at the time -- the slaughter of the Israeli olympians was particularly egregious (that word again) -- but never put the pieces together. The one that really chilled us to the bone was the Taliban's blowing up of the ancient Buddha statues -- blogged here and here -- just months before 9/11, Al-Queda's big mistake. They thought we were a nation of Kerrys who would continue to put up with "nuisances," appease and eventually fold. They weren't counting on the sleeping giants, the Giulianis and GW's of this great nation of ours.
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