Listened to the VP debate on radio and heard Cheney repeat the President's nostrum that it is better to fight the terrorists abroad than here. The President loves this idea so much that he not only stated it in his RNC convention speech, but suggested that all civilized nations should adopt this strategy in his recent speech before the United Nations.
Bush repeats this idea so often that he must believe it plays well with Americans. Sadly, I suspect it does. Sadly, because there is precious little logic to the notion that terrorists who want to strike on Amercan soil will be so easily sidetracked. Sadly, because it is craven. And sadly, most of all, because it implies that we believe that the innocent people who live in the countries Bush recommends turning into war zones may be freely sacrificed for the sake of our own safety, that they are less deserving of life than we are, that they are, in short, not really persons like we are. How SHOULD we count them? As each, 3/5ths a person, or less, much less?
To the peoples of these other nations, this says, "We assume the right to turn your country into a war zone, a battleground which will lay waste to your cities and serve as a magnet for terrorists by offering up our troops as bait, in order to draw terrorists into battle with us on your soil and so divert them from attacking us here, substituting the devastation of your land and your countrymen's innocent blood for our own. The fruits of this brainstorm are on grim display in Iraq everyday now in the number of innocent Iraqis killed and maimed in bombings by insurgents. This -- shfiting the scene of battle so the death and destruction are borne by the innocent in foreign lands -- this is what constitutes America's heroic and holy War on Terror? This is what plays well in "the home of the brave"?
