I hate to laud John Kerry on anything, because he was a lousy candidate - nice wife, though - but it seems that he turned out right on the war on terror.
Remember last year when Kerry said that the war on terror needed to be fought just as much with intelligence and diplomacy as with the military? Remember when Bush et. al. eviscerated Kerry for being a big girlie-man for suggesting this wasn't a real man's war where we'd just send Rambo in to kill all the bad guys? Well, guess what. Now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Rummy both agree with Kerry.
From Blogoland:
In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice. Administration officials say that phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign.Diplomatic? So General Myers doesn't even think it's an intelligence matter. Rather, it's for those Frenchified US diplomats, the biggest girlie-men of all - (NUANCE ALERT: this is the Bush administration's perception of the State Department, not ours) - THEY'RE the guys the Bushies now want to rely on. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but remember how only a year ago they went bat-shit crazy when John Kerry pretty much suggested the same, namely, that this wasn't going to be won with overwhelming military force?
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."
Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded.
To wit, the Washington Times last year, quoting Kerry and then the head of the RNC:
"In order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law-enforcement cooperation in the world," the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort," he said. "And we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight."
Marc Racicot, chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign, said Mr. Kerry's formula won't work. "Serving terrorists with legal papers will not win this war. This is a pre-9/11 attitude that turns a blind eye to the threats that face our country," he said.
