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Reported today by AP:
In Washington, Republican Party chief Ed Gillespie criticized Kerry for saying in an interview in The New York Times Magazine that, “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”
So he’d like us to consider terrorists “a nuisance.”
Let’s try to make some excuses for Senator Kerry. Surely he doesn’t mean the 3,000 deaths of 911 are a nuisance. Surely he’s just referring to pre-911 terrorists. Let’s see a few of the events that would include:
| US Embassy bombing | April 18, 1983 | 63 dead | 100 injured |
| Pan Am Flight 103 | December 21, 1988 | 259 dead | 11 injured |
| World Trade Center bombing | February 26, 1993 | 6 dead | 1,040 injured |
| USS Cole bombing | October 12, 2000 | 17 dead | 39 injured |
He dares to call all those murders, a nuisance. (Or he just wants us to ‘get back to the place where we can think of them as a nuisance’). Does he think to the loved ones of all those dead Americans, it was just a small annoyance? A minor irritation?
Those deaths may not have made a ripple in the little pond of Senator Kerry’s sheltered existence, but many of the rest of us who care about our fellow Americans, felt otherwise.
The reason this talk from Kerry is being accepted by many of the Democratic base, is that they would like to be reassured that we are all just as safe now as ever. That’s all. They just like being told that there’s no danger to them from terrorists. It makes them feel better. It’s what they want to believe.
And if wishing we were safe could make us safe, it would be great. However, terrorists continue to cut off heads, kill children, and look for ways to repeat 9-11 (or to do far worse) here.
There are those on the Left who are not hiding their heads in the sand; who know that wishing for a thing to be so, doesn’t make it so. On September 29th Dick Morris noted:
...poll data from Scott Rasmussen underscores Kerry’s dilemma. Should we commit more military force, the same amount or less to Iraq? Of Kerry’s voters, 40 percent want less force, 15 percent want the same – and 28 percent want more.
So this latest outrage from Kerry may well cost him votes.
In the meantime, the more reassuring Bush can be about our future safety given his leadership, the more it will help him win the votes of skittish Dems.
Update. See also these follow-up articles:
Kerry’s Nuisance Approach to Terrorists, Wrongly Assumes that No Nations Support Them.
Saddam’s Chief Nuclear Physicist Confirms Saddam’s Drive to Acquire WMDs
