They Hate Our Freedom
Ever since 9/11, the Bush administration has boiled the War on Terror® down to the most basic explanation posssible--the terrorists want to destroy America and kill Americans because they despise the freedom we have. That may be a component of it, but it comes nowhere close to explaining this fundamentalist-based movement. There are complexities and nuances that, if placed into a digestible enough explanation, would make sense to the majority of folks who don't read wonky magazines like American Prospect or The Economist. Assessing Kerry's speech last week at Temple University, David Corn defended the fact that Kerry has had no plan for dealing with Iraq or The Terrorists (as the Republicans continue to hammer away at), and he notes a very cogent passage from that speech. This is the stuff that, hopefully, will come to the fore in the debates starting this week.

This was a speech dripping policy proposals; I encourage all to read it (click here for a transcript). Pay attention especially to what he has to say about handling the threat of loose nukes from the former Soviet Union and addressing critical (and common-sense) homeland security needs ignored by the Bush administration. In one passage that struck me Kerry described the overall dynamic of the struggle against bin Ladenism. He said:

I will wage this war relentlessly with a single-minded determination: to capture or kill the terrorists, crush their movement and free the world from fear. To destroy our enemy, we have to know our enemy. We have to understand that we are facing a radical fundamentalist movement with global reach and a very specific plan. They are not just out to kill us for the sake of killing us. They want to provoke a conflict that will radicalize the people of the Muslim world, turning them against the United States and the West. And they hope to transform that anger into a force that will topple the region’s governments and pave the way for a new empire, an oppressive, fundamentalist superstate stretching across a vast area from Europe to Africa, from the Middle East to Central Asia.

That's neither a profound nor radical description of the conflict at hand. And it would not be noteworthy, except that it is far different from the depiction Bush offers of the fight against al Qaeda. Bush repeatedly says that bin Laden and al Qaeda attacked the United States because they "hate" our "freedom." Bush has stated that their goal is destroy America and the freedom it represents. This is a comic-book caricature of reality: pure evil versus glorious freedom. Bin Laden certainly is an evil mass-murderer. But shouldn't the leader of the United States--a.k.a. the Leader of the Free World--have some understanding of the whole story and perhaps even share it occasionally with the citizens? The battle between the United States and al Qaeda and jihadism is a geostrategic struggle, not a storybook tale. To defeat a foe, it usually is helpful to know and understand the enemy and its desires. Yet Bush keeps the plot line oh so simple. I'd feel more secure if the president of the United States had a full grasp of the challenging situation he and the nation face. Swagger, after all, only takes you so far. But I suppose the election will decide whether or not this is a majority view.