Daniel Henninger says we need to focus the currently vacuous political debate. He's quite correct, and has some detailed questions that need answers.
President Bush should lead on this, not be led, even though it cuts against the grain of conventional poltical wisdom. The war on terror and America itself are suffering from an obfuscation crisis.
The war against global terror should be the paramount issue on which George Bush and John Kerry contest the 2004 American presidential election. Nothing else is remotely close. Jobs, the economy, taxes--it's all suddenly background noise.Posted by Alan at May 21, 2004 11:41 AMThe reactions to Abu Ghraib in the United States, coming on the heels of the 9/11 Commission hearings, have shown there are important issues in the war on terror that need to be settled. And only a presidential election can settle them. Presidential elections are the one institution we trust to deliver mandates. That was never more needed than now.
In the days after September 11, the country came together in a way not seen since perhaps the assassination of John Kennedy. Now, from the distance of more than two and a half years, it is hard to say anymore what the nation agrees on--beyond the mere fact of global terrorism.
Since September 11, and especially the past few weeks, we have seen and heard enough political rancor to know, at a minimum, that the nation is confused about its role in the war on terror--if it believes it has a role. Let me stipulate that it was the Democratic Party--or at least John Kerry, Howard Dean and John Edwards in pursuit of the presidency--who chose to turn a major American war into a partisan dispute, and therefore a voting issue.
Those who oppose the Bush presidency and its foreign policy are entitled to their beliefs. But those who agreed that the world after September 11 was an intolerably dangerous place, worth the sacrifices of war, deserve to know what the terms of this country's engagement with that world are going to be. If the terms of engagement are being altered, everyone with interests from Main Street to Wall Street should know that. In a serious democracy, disclosing that information is the purpose of an election.