Misconceptions color Bush's portrayal of Kerry

Katie Gray’s letter published in the Crimson on October 29 (“Kerry has not Heeded the Lesson of 9/11”) repeats a couple of misleading claims that the Republican Party and the Bush campaign habitually make about the two presidential candidates’ attitudes toward terrorism.

First of all, she states that Senator Kerry described terrorism as a “nuisance.” This claim is false. Kerry said that his ambition is to reduce terrorism to the point of being a mere nuisance: “We have to get back to...where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said, adding, “We’re going to reduce it...to a level where it isn’t on the rise, it isn’t threatening people’s lives every day.” This is a sentiment that everyone can agree with; in fact, the previous President Bush’s national security advisor, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, made virtually the same comment in 2002. Not even the Republican Party wishes the United States to remain perpetually in grave danger of terrorism.  Would it not be fine to live in a world in which terrorism posed no more danger than, say, illegal gambling? Katie Gray does a disservice to honest political discourse by claiming that Kerry said the opposite of what he actually said.

She also credits President Bush for dealing with changes in the United States’ security needs by creating the Department of Homeland Security. She may be unaware that the Department of Homeland Security was proposed by Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, and the White House actually opposed the formation of the department for months.

Finally, it’s odd that Gray praises the president for not allowing 9/11 to change his plans for invading Iraq, since her point is that 9/11 changed forever the way the United States needs to conduct its security. In that case, one might think that because of 9/11, the president would have realized that terrorism was a greater and more immediate danger to the United States than Iraq was, and put his Iraq plans on hold until Al Qaeda was defeated and America was made safe from terrorism. Sadly, he did not. And, because the president made Iraq a higher priority than the lessons of 2001, the United States is now scarcely any safer from terrorism, and Osama bin Laden is alive and well and releasing threatening videotapes; meanwhile, the American army is too tied up trying to create order in Iraq to be available if a terrorist emergency should indeed occur.

I agree with Gray that the United States needs a leader who understands the nature of the threat posed by terrorism and how best to defend us from it. John Kerry is such a leader. George Bush has proven by now that he is not.

AARON J. DINKIN ‘02

Philadelphia, Pa.

October 30