Kerry Draws A Line In The Terrorism War
John Kerry's differences with George W. Bush are subtle and nuanced when it comes to the war on Iraq. Not so when it comes to the war on terrorism. In an April 18 interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Kerry took issue with the Bush administration's reliance on military force to root out terrorists and sketched a sharply differing approach. "I will use our military when necessary, but [fighting terrorism] is not primarily a military operation," Kerry said. "It's an intelligence gathering, law enforcement, public-diplomacy effort, and we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas."
To win the war on ideas, Kerry has called for a "major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world." He'd mount an educational campaign to reach the next generation of Islamic youth to compete with the anti-American teachings of the radical madrasahs, or religious schools. Bush had tried public diplomacy, but the State Department failed in its attempt at "branding" America as more palatable to Muslims. The effort is being retooled.
Republicans have made criticism of Kerry as soft on national security a major part of the campaign. Vice President Cheney, for instance, said, "He's embraced the strategy of the 1990s, which holds that when we are attacked, we ought to round up those directly responsible and put them on trial and then call it a day." That approach, Cheney said, would "leave the network behind the attacks virtually untouched." So far, the public seems to prefer the president's approach. A USA Today / CNN/Gallup poll last week showed that by a 2-to-1 margin, voters say only Bush, not Kerry, would do a good job handling terrorism. Says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker: "Kerry has a thoughtful approach, but thoughtfulness is not necessarily a strong quality to have in a presidential campaign. Subtlety flies out the window and is replaced with hard-edged cliches, which the president happens to be very good at." -Angie Cannon
This story appears in the May 3, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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