So it still suprises me that Bush is regarded as the presidential candidate who is better qualified on homeland security. As this article by Stephen E. Flynn in Foreign Affairs explains, we remain more vulnerable than ever, largely because of the Bush administration’s stubborn adherence to a misguided and ultimately dangerous ‘lashing out’ war on terrorism. Flynn, who is a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations notes that despite Dick Cheney’s intimiations otherwise, it’s not that easy to use the ‘the best defense is a good offense’ strategy of fighting terrorism. You may recall that Dick Cheney is on the record as saying that, “wars are not won on the defensive. To fully and finally remove this danger [of terrorism], we have only one option — and that’s to take the fight to the enemy.”
Dick Cheney would have us believe that that enemy is in Iraq, but as Flynn notes, “There is no central front on which al Qaeda and its radical jihadist imitators can be cornered and destroyed.” Anyway, it’s a great article, and quite an eye opener. I think that Kerry needs to hammer Bush on this issue.