Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Kerry's Time. Kerry's Destiny.

With all due respect to the Bush Administration, we now live in a qorld quite different from the one in 2000 when they took office.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. blew open wide the terrorist threat that was simmering for decades.

It is like being pestered by a low-grade bully who pushed off your hat or tripped you for years before finally putting a bullet in your knee cap.

The response of the Bush administration to the bullet in the knee cap has been with to come raging back in attack.

That is just partially what we need to do in response to the threat of terrorism. But the muscle must be a tool of the mind.

The Bush administration has shown little indication of using the mind to temper the brute strength so that the strength will have decisive impact.

The long-term battle to thwart and dismantle terrorism as the threat it had become belongs to an administration that welcomes cunning and diplomacy and embraces an ability to think things through from many angles. It requires a President who is skilled at working in a body that requires consensus, for international consensus is a force of power -- like the singular strands of a fabric woven together to form a strength that is more striden than any one individual strand -- that is required to eradicate terrorism in the far pockets of the globe.

Senator Kerry possesses the statemanship intellect to conduct this battle. He is the right man at the right time and this is his moment of destiny. This can be his era. For it is an era of building -- alliances, new cultures and hopes -- a war of both bombs and brains that will emasculate terrorism more than a "bring 'em on" mentality, which only nurtures it.

The Right Should Pay Heed to Hank Williams

Since the right wing has claimed the flag as its backdrop and country music as its score, they ought to pay more attention to the words of Hank Williams. When it comes to intrusions into our private lives -- be they in the books we read, doctors and procedures we seek, or those who choose to marry each other -- they should listen to, "Mind your own business, then you won't be mindin' mine." They'd be lost if they didn't have other people's lives to poke their noses into.