The Bush campaign spin seems to be influencing Mr. Jarvis’s take on what John Kerry sees as the real enemy in the war on terror. In this post he’s asking to hear John Kerry admit that the true enemy we face is Islamic fascism itself. Well guess what Jeff?
…The war on terror is as monumental a struggle as the Cold War. Its outcome will determine whether we and our children live in freedom or in fear. It is not, as some people think, a clash of civilizations. Radical Islamic fundamentalism is not the true face of Islam. This is a clash between civilization and the enemies of civilization; between humanity?s best hopes and most primitive fears. The danger we face today will become even greater if the terrorists acquire what we know they are seeking ? weapons of mass destruction, which they would use to commit mass murder. We are confronting an enemy and an ideology that must be destroyed. We are in a war that must be won.
Americans know this. We understand the stakes. On September 11th there were no Democrats, no Republicans. We were only Americans. We all stood together. We all supported the President. We all prayed for victory, because we love our country and despise everything our enemies stand for.
But three years after 9/11, we see our enemies striking — in Spain, in Turkey, in Indonesia, in Kenya, and now every day — in the most despicable and gruesome ways in Iraq, which was not a terrorist haven before the invasion. In fact, there were more terrorist attacks in the world last year than the year before. And we see an administration in confusion; we hear the president, the commander in chief, proclaiming one day that this war can?t be won and then saying something different the next day. And we hear the Secretary of Defense himself wondering whether the radicals are recruiting, training, and deploying more terrorists than we?re capturing or killing.
Then, yesterday, when asked about conditions in Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld told Congress, and I quote: ?Let?s pretend, hypothetically, that you get to election time in January and let?s pretend that it?s roughly like it is, or a little worse, which it could be, because you?ve got to expect it to continue?.So be it, nothing is perfect in life.? If there was any doubt that the leaders of the Bush Administration are living in a fantasy world of spin, I think Secretary Rumsfeld put that doubt to rest.
We need to end this confusion. We need national leaders who will face reality ? not only in Iraq but in the war on terror. And we need a president who has no doubt that the war on terror can and must be won.
The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy ? Al Qaeda — which killed more than three thousand people on 9/11 and which still plots our destruction today. And there?s just no question about it: the President?s misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win. Iraq is now what it was not before the war ? a haven for terrorists. George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority. As president, I will finish the job in Iraq and refocus our energies on the real war on terror.
I will wage this war relentlessly with a single-minded determination: to capture or kill the terrorists, crush their movement and free the world from fear. To destroy our enemy, we have to know our enemy. We have to understand that we are facing a radical fundamentalist movement with global reach and a very specific plan. They are not just out to kill us for the sake of killing us. They want to provoke a conflict that will radicalize the people of the Muslim world, turning them against the United States and the West. And they hope to transform that anger into a force that will topple the region?s governments and pave the way for a new empire, an oppressive, fundamentalist superstate stretching across a vast area from Europe to Africa, from the Middle East to Central Asia.
The American people have a right to hear the answer to a fundamental question: How are we going to win this war? What is our strategy for eliminating the terrorists, discrediting their cause, and smashing their forces so that America can actually be safer?
John Kerry: Speech at Temple University, 9-24-2004