THE MORE DEMOCRATIC presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry talks about how he would wage the war on terror, the more he appears to be planning a retreat from an offensive to a defensive strategy. Last Friday, Kerry told a Kansas City audience that: “I know I can run a more effective, smarter, more productive war on terror . . . I will do it by bringing to our side the allies that we used to have which should have been with us in the first place. I’ll take the target off American troops . . . and we’re going to get our troops home where they belong.”
Earlier in the week, Kerry boasted that he would fight a “more sensitive” war on terror. Now he talks about bringing the troops home, “where they belong.” Does Sen. Kerry really think that the war on terror can be fought from the continental United States? Is he opposed to a forward strategy of fighting terrorists wherever they operate? If so, then Kerry seems to want to return to the approach employed in the 1990s, when al Qaeda was allowed to turn Afghanistan into a base of operations. Kerry apparently favors a defensive approach to the war on terror rather than the offensive approach the Bush administration has chosen.
