I recently discussed Bush with a Kerry-ite in my car. While we agree on many things, we don’t on the following issues.

About Iraq: She believes that people need to politically evolve on their own “like we did”. I ask her if that means that forcing democracy upon people is wrong, and she said “yes”. I then asked if that means people have “a right to oppression.”

I also pointed out that her logic was incredibly reactionary: Might was right, and you were on your own if you were on the wrong side of that equation. You can slap as many “Free Tibet” bumperstickers as you want on your car, but you will not dislodge China from the province it killed 250,000 people and has called “Xijang” for 45 years.

She responded that well, she was talking about the ideal world and that in such an ideal world people would be able to throw off their oppressors themselves. I pointed out that Bush didn’t have the luxury of being president in an “ideal world”.

By her reasoning, it would be immoral to stand up against any of the great genocides of the past 100 years. The Turkish slaughter of Armenians. The Holocaust in Europe. The Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Rwanda Genocide, the “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans, and now Darfur in the Sudan.

On Afghanistan: She says that even though the people are happier today than they were three years ago under the Taliban, there are without a doubt some older people who long for the past. I point out that the Taliban came from the Madrassas in Pakistan in 1995-96 and laid siege to Kabul – in which the Taliban killed tens of thousands of people by shelling the city indiscriminately, so the nostalgia for the past would no doubt be limited.

She’s openly gay, and doesn’t like the fact that Bush wanted “to criminalize her personal life in the Constitution.” I told her that the FMA was Bush’s playing to his base, Kerry’s position wasn’t that much different from Bush’s (depending on the group he was talking to), and the bill had a snowball’s chance in Havana of getting passed. I then pointed out that the Taliban collapsed walls on homosexuals, and that while Bush may disagree with her lifestyle, there are terrorists out there who would like nothing more to behead her and her partner for it.

She stated that what really bothered her then was Bush’s stupidity for not being able to express these ideas without “getting all defensive”. I warned her “you underestimate Bush at your peril.” Stupidity was Bush’s schtick – the same way feeling people’s pain was Clinton’s. For Bush, it keeps him in power. For Clinton, it allowed him to cop a feel.

I then reminded her that I disagree with Bush on most of the issues. Deficit spending to Bush is like Wendy’s Triples to Michael Moore: he just can’t get enough. His compassionate conservativism is even more oxymoronic today than it was 4 years ago. His offshoring position seemed crafted by CEOs in their boardrooms in Bermuda.

But I lived through the Carter years once, and I’m having nightmares that I’m about to do so again.

She’s a registered voter in Pennsylvania.

I’m not the only one being chilled to the bone by this statement. Lileks. Instapundit. Volokh. All mention this. It’s the reason why I believe with all my heart that Kerry is the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time. He is now more than ever UNFIT FOR COMMAND. Let’s go with Lileks:

Finally, this from the NYT, ably dissected by the Volohkians:

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.”

Tony Soprano doesn’t take over schools and shoot kids in the back. The doxies of the Bunny Ranch don’t train at flight schools to ram brothels into skyscrapers.

A nuisance?

A nuisance? I don’t want the definition of success of terrorism to be “it isn’t on the rise.” I want the definition of success to be “free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven’t gotten around to kicking in the ass yet.” I want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Iran and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there’s no point in funding the fundies. An Egypt that stops pouring out the Jew-hatred as a form of political novacaine to keep the citizens from turning their ire on their own government. I want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamicist radicals in their midst before the Wahabbi poison is the only acceptable strain on the continent. Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn’t a nuisance. It’s war.
But that’s not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.

But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.

We have to get back to the place we were.

No. We have to go the place where they are.