Democrats and War

This election is a referendum on America's foreign policy. And since Bush's foreign policy is familiar, the critical issue is how a Kerry Administration would conduct the war against terror. I've argued that the Democrats are dangerous because they either don't believe in evil or insist evil can be overcome without confrontation and military force, but by negotiation and diplomacy alone. Here's three recent and similar views:

First, John Leo of US News and World Reports:

[The doubts about Kerry] are rooted in the value system widely shared among Democrats: Most people are basically good; wars are caused not by evil motives but by misunderstandings that can be talked out; conflict can be overcome by more tolerance and examining of our own faults or by taking disputes to the United Nations. As a personal creed, these benign and humble attitudes are admirable. As the foundation of a policy to confront terrorists who wish to blow up our cities, they are alarming.

Second, Joe Katzman, bloggger at Winds of Change:

I think that Kerry wants, more than anything, to return to normalcy through winning the war, as opposed to winning the war so that we can go back to normalcy. Note that the emphasis in each clause is different - in one case, the focus is on normalcy, in the other, on victory. . .

In a way, I'm supporting Bush today because I believe that Kerry is fundamentally a legislator; that in his personal experience, victory is a matter of negotiation and working toward consensus.

I don't believe enough in the UN to see that as valuable. I don't believe that the mad Wahabbist cults that we have allowed to spring up are going to be open to reasoning together between cutting their hostage's throats.

Third, John Rauch in the National Journal:

And what are Kerry's core beliefs? If you shake him awake at 3 a.m., what are the two or three things he knows deep down, the way Reagan knew that Big Government and Communism were bad and Bush knows that Al Qaeda and its allies have launched a global insurgency on behalf of a virulent totalitarian doctrine? I don't know.

What's it all mean? The next President's principal duty is protecting America from Islamic terrorism. The terrorists take the Koran literally, which (8:39) exhorts the faithful to "fight them [unbelievers] until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah." Their definition of "unbelievers" includes all Westerners. So, as translated by MEMRI, Al Qaeda's plan is simple:

Come closer to Allah through the blood of infidels, do not relent in spilling [their blood], and through [this blood] wipe out humiliation and disgrace from among your Muslim nation! . . .

We ask Allah to turn this Ramadan into a month of glory, victory, and might, to hoist high in [this month] the banner of religion, to strengthen Islam and the Muslims, . . . to firmly plant the banner of Jihad, and to smite the perverts and the obstinate.

Radical Islam offers only two options: conversion to Islam under Sharia law or death. That's evil--and grounds for war. And America can't afford a President who believes evil is negotiable.

More:

Mark Steyn weighs in:

I want Bush to win on Election Day because he's committed to this war and, as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be.'' The longer it gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their shriveled post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.