Matt Bai's article

*Note* This post was written on Sunday,October 10th, the night the article came out.

What are my thoughts on Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine piece? I'm glad you asked. First impression left me feeling a little sick - that this article could do more harm than good. I realized that Kerry makes some logical conclusions and strong points that no doubt will get lost in the fear and war rhetoric that comes from the other side. People want to hear that we can win the war on terror, not just bust it down to a nuisance that does not control our lives, even though the latter is the most likely outcome.

It goes without saying that you simply can't kill every terrorist. If that makes me a wimp, than so be it. But it is an impossibility, a never ending mobius strip of war and suppression of others. I don't want my children to be forced to learn the latest in "duck and cover" techniques at school, or that Islam is an evil religion we must purge from the earth.

Both sides want a safer world as the end result, but they have very different visions of how this end is achieved. Since the article is supposed to be about Kerry's vision, I will try and stick with his points.

Many on the right will misconstrue what Kerry has to say as weak on terror. First, they will deride and mock him for the following statement about how 9/11 changed him:

"It accelerated -- " He paused. "I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it."

They will say it shows Kerry as out of touch with the way we need to think about the war on terror today. It makes me wonder if they read this part of the article as well:

In 1988, Kerry successfully proposed an amendment that forced the Treasury Department to negotiate so-called Kerry Agreements with foreign countries. Under these agreements, foreign governments had to promise to keep a close watch on their banks for potential money laundering or they risked losing their access to U.S. markets. Other measures Kerry tried to pass throughout the 90's, virtually all of them blocked by Republican senators on the banking committee, would end up, in the wake of 9/11, in the USA Patriot Act; among other things, these measures subject banks to fines or loss of license if they don't take steps to verify the identities of their customers and to avoid being used for money laundering.

Through his immersion in the global underground, Kerry made connections among disparate criminal and terrorist groups that few other senators interested in foreign policy were making in the 90's. Richard A. Clarke, who coordinated security and counterterrorism policy for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, credits Kerry with having seen beyond the national-security tableau on which most of his colleagues were focused. "He was getting it at the same time that people like Tony Lake were getting it, in the '93 -'94 time frame," Clarke says, referring to Anthony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser. "And the 'it' here was that there was a new nonstate-actor threat, and that nonstate-actor threat was a blended threat that didn't fit neatly into the box of organized criminal, or neatly into the box of terrorism. What you found were groups that were all of the above."

Kerry it seems, had a post 9/11 view before 9/11 ever occurred, at least to a certain degree. Imagine if the provisions of the Patriot Act he proposed prior to 9/11 had been enacted. It is impossible to know if those changes could have prevented those horrifying events. But Kerry seemed to be looking at a larger picture while most of us were in a different wing of the museum.

The whole idea of preventing terrorists from becoming terrorists seems to be lost on Bush and the right. The whole war on terror so far has played out like some sort of perverse video game they are watching unfold, cheering at the idea of shock and awe on our side (remember him saying "it feels good" before his speech announcing the bombing would begin?) but seemingly befuddled by what to do as we get tied down.

As we sit stuck in Iraq, Kerry proposes more help from our allies. Not just in the form of boots on the ground or financial backing, but in intelligence gathering and preventive measures as well. Now that we have turned Iraq into a lodestone for terrorists, it is important we stop them before they arrive.

If terrorists are treated like criminals in this sense then through surveillance and raids (for example) you can arrest them before they act. And what better way to gather this information than with the aid of other countries. European governments can provide more crucial information and espionage than we can alone. Middle Eastern governments can be made to understand how they can help prevent attacks like those occurring in Baghdad from happening on their soil. They can help monitor the borders and sore spots within their own borders, and we can help them with the tools to excise these spots. We treat terrorists like criminals in a preventive sense, not in a reactionary one.

However there will be times when this isn't enough, and that is when we act. We present our case to the world all the while gearing up for war. We listen to the concerns of others and address them the best we can. And if all else fails, we act alone.

Perhaps the most important aspect of increased diplomacy is the prevention and altering of conditions that inspire terrorists to form and act. Not by altering our lives, but by altering theirs. Why fight 100 terrorists when you can prevent them from becoming terrorists in the first place?

You will just have to believe me when I say I gained most of this insight from Matt Bai's article. I have often read that the perfect candidate for many would be some sort of Bush/Kerry hybrid. This article helped me realize that Kerry's position on the "war on terror" is just that. It encompasses the idea of reaching out to the world that is frequently mocked by the right, all the while allowing for Bush's more proactive stance. While the article will not put the right at ease, it will certainly allow many to feel more secure with John Kerry.

*UPDATE* I wrote all of this last night, and I still have yet to post it. Even this response did not help me overcome the uneasy feeling I got as I read Bai's article. But now I think I have it figured out.

For months and months we have heard both sides say they are going to win the war on terror because that is what America wants to hear. Even I got sucked into the bravado of the whole thing. However, there have been two moments this campaign where the guard has been dropped and a more realistic truth has escaped. One is contained in Bai's article on John Kerry. The other is that moment on the Today show with Matt Lauer when Bush, in a moment of candor said the following:

I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world - let's put it that way.

Bush then goes on to explain his two pronged strategy: Hunting them down, and inspire freedom and liberty in the world.

I think it's fair to say from this that both sides have the same general ideas in the war on terror, but different ideas on how to get there. Kerry's ideas above seem to be better suited to me than the hair trigger reactionary we currently have in the White House. That is one of the many reasons I will vote for Kerry in November.

What should not be lost in this debate, however, is that both sides know their "we will win it" posturing is false. Both sides also realize this is not what the general public wants to hear. It seems that this "we can win it" rhetoric may become for both sides a campaign promise that neither can fulfill.