Kerry unchanged by 9-11

Which is, I think a good thing. He recognized, long before the destruction of the World Trade Towers, the rise of groups -- from Islamic fundamentalists to narcoterrorists -- who thrive on failed states. Who, unlike the state-sponsored terrorism that Bush & Co. thinks we're fighting a conventional war with, have no interest in being sponsored, but rather move from country to country on false passports, and are funded through shadowy organizations who take advantage of financial institutions who would rather not know where their customers' money is coming from or going to. He learned all of this early on in his Senate career, when he went after the banker to the drug lords -- and George W. Bush -- BCCI.

Although he starts out snarkily highlighting Kerry's (natural) paranoia when talking to the press about a subject so fraught with many American's fear and insecurity, Matt Bai does get at the essential difference between Bush and Kerry, and how a Kerry administration might begin to attack those who are trying to sow chaos and fear among us.

'I think we can do a better job,'' Kerry said, ''of cutting off financing, of exposing groups, of working cooperatively across the globe, of improving our intelligence capabilities nationally and internationally, of training our military and deploying them differently, of specializing in special forces and special ops, of working with allies, and most importantly -- and I mean most importantly -- of restoring America's reputation as a country that listens, is sensitive, brings people to our side, is the seeker of peace, not war, and that uses our high moral ground and high-level values to augment us in the war on terror, not to diminish us.''

This last point was what Kerry seemed to be getting at with his mantra of ''effectiveness,'' and it was in fact the main thrust of his campaign pitch about terrorism. By infuriating allies and diminishing the country's international esteem, Kerry argued, Bush had made it impossible for America to achieve its goals abroad. By the simple act of changing presidents, the country would greatly increase its chances of success in the global war on terror. Both candidates, in fact, were suggesting that the main difference between them was one of leadership style and not policy; just as Bush had taken to arguing that Kerry was too inconstant to lead a nation at war, Kerry's critique centered on the idea that Bush had proved himself too stubborn and arrogant to represent America to the rest of the world.

But when you listen carefully to what Bush and Kerry say, it becomes clear that the differences between them are more profound than the matter of who can be more effective in achieving the same ends. Bush casts the war on terror as a vast struggle that is likely to go on indefinitely, or at least as long as radical Islam commands fealty in regions of the world. In a rare moment of either candor or carelessness, or perhaps both, Bush told Matt Lauer on the ''Today'' show in August that he didn't think the United States could actually triumph in the war on terror in the foreseeable future. ''I don't think you can win it,'' he said -- a statement that he and his aides tried to disown but that had the ring of sincerity to it. He and other members of his administration have said that Americans should expect to be attacked again, and that the constant shadow of danger that hangs over major cities like New York and Washington is the cost of freedom. In his rhetoric, Bush suggests that terrorism for this generation of Americans is and should be an overwhelming and frightening reality.

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

In other words, help -- and sanity -- is on the way.

By singling out three states in particular- Iraq, North Korea and Iran -- as an ''axis of evil,'' and by invading Iraq on the premise that it did (or at least might) sponsor terrorism, Bush cemented the idea that his war on terror is a war against those states that, in the president's words, are not with us but against us. Many of Bush's advisers spent their careers steeped in cold-war strategy, and their foreign policy is deeply rooted in the idea that states are the only consequential actors on the world stage, and that they can -- and should -- be forced to exercise control over the violent groups that take root within their borders.

Kerry's view, on the other hand, suggests that it is the very premise of civilized states, rather than any one ideology, that is under attack. And no one state, acting alone, can possibly have much impact on the threat, because terrorists will always be able to move around, shelter their money and connect in cyberspace; there are no capitals for a superpower like the United States to bomb, no ambassadors to recall, no economies to sanction. The U.S. military searches for bin Laden, the Russians hunt for the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev and the Israelis fire missiles at Hamas bomb makers; in Kerry's world, these disparate terrorist elements make up a loosely affiliated network of diabolical villains, more connected to one another by tactics and ideology than they are to any one state sponsor. The conflict, in Kerry's formulation, pits the forces of order versus the forces of chaos, and only a unified community of nations can ensure that order prevails.

One can infer from this that if Kerry were able to speak less guardedly, in a less treacherous atmosphere than a political campaign, he might say, as some of his advisers do, that we are not in an actual war on terror. Wars are fought between states or between factions vying for control of a state; Al Qaeda and its many offspring are neither. If Kerry's foreign-policy frame is correct, then law enforcement probably is the most important, though not the only, strategy you can employ against such forces, who need passports and bank accounts and weapons in order to survive and flourish. Such a theory suggests that, in our grief and fury, we have overrated the military threat posed by Al Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a criminal enterprise, albeit a devastatingly sophisticated and global one, into the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin -- and thus conferring on the jihadists a kind of stature that might actually work in their favor, enabling them to attract more donations and more recruits.

A vital distinction because if Bush's "idealism" in "promoting democracy" in the middle east goes on unabated, our actions -- firing on apparent civilians in Iraq (with Iran waiting for a second term) with images beamed all through the region -- will continue to serve as an effective recruiting tool for bin Laden and Zarqawi, while at the same time performing as a great PR firm, helping to turn that pair of dangerous lunatics into heros throughout the middle east and south asia.

But, unfortunately this is not a debate the American people are allowed to hear. The Rovian tactics that are driving the campaign are to distort, smear, and when all else fails, lie. Bush, unable to debate Kerry, instead goes out on the stump the next day, and in his charming sneer, misrepresents what Kerry had argued the night before. It is impossible to disagree with Bush's tactics in Iraq because doing so only shows you hate America and wil let outsiders attack us while we wait for an okay from the perfidious French to defend the homeland.

And that's too bad because it is a discussion we really need to have.

The essential cluelessness of the Bush administration's plan to combat terrorism is underscored in another Times' story today, this one attempting to decipher just who is Zarqawi and where did he come from.

Many intelligence officials in Europe doubt that the man jailed 13 years ago for sexual assault in Jordan possesses the organizational skills or manpower muscle to launch even a small percentage of the nearly 100 insurgents' attacks that occur across Iraq daily.

"I do not think that anyone in Europe or the Middle East honestly believes that he is responsible for everything that the United States says he has done in Iraq," said a senior European intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The guy is on the run. He is hiding from the U.S. forces, and he is probably changing houses every night. It would be almost impossible for him to calmly plan and execute the operations all over Iraq that some people believe he has done."

In fact, in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Zarqawi was virtually unknown to anyone other than Jordanian intelligence officials, who saw him as a dangerous militant with a strong desire to turn Jordan into an Islamic state.

The essay goes on to puzzle why a man charged by the U.S. with working closely with Sadddam Hussein -- and therefore exhibit A in the case that Saddam sponsored terrorism -- would simultaneously be working with Ansar al-Islam, a group that operated in the No-Fly Zone in Northern Iraq -- off-limits to Saddam -- and dedicated to the collapse of the Baathist state in Iraq.

"It defies common sense to believe Mr. Zarqawi has managed, from a hideout in Iraq, to build a worldwide terror network that has attacked so often," one European-based counterterrorism official said.

While much about Mr. Zarqawi's operations remain unknown, some senior intelligence officials in Europe and the Middle East, as well as some terror experts, argue that the United States has purposely overstated Mr. Zarqawi's importance, turning him into an almost mythic figure. This portrayal may have enhanced his aura with young recruits, helping his organization entice new jihadists in Europe and the Middle East to join his group's ranks, they say.

Those damned European counterterrorism experts. Don't they know that George Bush is trying to serve as a recruiter for anti-American terrorists groups so he can get them all in one place, say, for the swearing-in ceremony at Jihad Headquarters, and get 'em dead or alive?

And what the essay does not ask, if Zarqawi is such a powerful figure in the war on terrorism, why didn't Bush & Co. get him and the members of Ansar al-Islam when they were living in huts out in the open in the No-Fly Zone? Oh yeah, I remember, taking out the only terrorists operating in Iraq in February 2003, one clearly with no ties to Hussein, would have made marketing the war to the U.S. public much more difficult.