Growing terror
The number of American casualties in Iraq: 1,000 and rising. The number of Iraqis killed near Baghdad: 10,363.
The number of innocent school children and teachers that terrorists killed in Beslin, Russia: at least 330.
The number of planes brought down near Moscow just the week before: two, killing all 90 aboard.
Does anyone really care where either George W. Bush or John Kerry spent the Vietnam War?
This week in the surreal world of presidential campaign land, more ink was devoted to Kerry’s swift boat adventures and Bush’s ducking of National Guard duty. Page 1 stories and wire services carried reports that the brass covered up Bush’s alleged dereliction of duty. Then came reports that documents purporting that appeared to have been forged. Great amounts of time and experts were called upon to debate whether the font that the documents were written on could have been in use in the 1970s. It looks like today’s Microsoft Word program and not yesteryear’s manual typewriter.
Is any of this important today in the context of world events? In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans would not have tolerated this type of pettiness. We seemed then to finally have come to grips with sorting out what matters and what does not. Someone needs to remind Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry of this. Vietnam is no longer the war that we are fighting. It is a war of terrorism. One that we believe strayed far off course the moment Mr. Bush bombed Iraq on misstated information. Not only is America still fighting that war with mounting casualties, it established a dangerous precedent.
Following the Beslin schoolhouse slayings, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed a similar oath to that declared by Bush three years ago. Russia is prepared to hunt down the enemy and attack terrorists wherever it finds them.
If Russia can hang the terrorist label on any of its enemies the way Bush did on Saddam Hussein (despite any credible link to al Qaida or 9/11) then the world has grown unsafer. Isn’t it time for the world’s leaders to unite and pursue the common goal expressed Sept. 12, 2001?