If you want to be ready for the week ahead, settle in and read this piece in The New York Times Magazine about Kerry's views on the war on terror. And then pass the piece on to anyone who might not understand what's at stake in the upcoming election.

Here are some of the "money quotes":

(1) ''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."

Comment

This is reminiscent of Teresa Kerry's earlier comment on the July 8 edition of Larry King Live, where she noted "I think most Americans subconsciously believe something [another terror attack on the United States] is going to happen. It's a matter of when, and it's a matter of how... but, you know, Europeans have lived that way, and other people around the world have lived that way. Americans have been very safe, at least as a nation." (emphasis added).

For the Kerrys, it appears that terrorism is something that Americans should just learn to accept, like prostitution or illegal gambling. The goal is to make sure that terrorism doesn't increase -- not to stop it entirely. And if the Europeans have had to live with it, why should America be any different?

But what exactly does he mean that we should "get back to the place we were"? Are we to retreat into the ignorant complacency of the '90's -- at least until another attack is launched on American soil?


(2)How would Kerry wage a more "effective" war on terror? ''I think we can do a better job 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.'' (emphasis added).

Comments

On August 7, 2004, John Kerry said the following: “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror . . .." After being roundly ridiculed, he tried to "clarify" the remark, but he obviously meant what he said.

Kerry has always seen the war as a law-enforcement operation. During the Democratic debate that took place in Greenville, South Carolina on January 29, 2004, he argued, "The war on terror is...occasionally military. ... But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Senator Kerry, law enforcement is for criminals. War is for terrorists. Criminals break the laws. Terrorists who shoot children in the back and cut off the heads of bound hostages don't recognize the existence of law. You try and incarcerate the former. But you must kill the latter.


(3) And finally, don't forget that along with any President, you get the President's team:

''We're not in a war on terror, in the literal sense,'' says Richard Holbrooke, the Clinton-era diplomat who could well become Kerry's secretary of state. ''The war on terror is like saying 'the war on poverty.' It's just a metaphor." (emphasis added).

Comments

This is truly chilling. Three years ago, more Americans are murdered en masse than at Pearl Harbor, but there's not a war on. It's just a "metaphor." Let's ask Ted Olson, or the loved ones of any of the people murdered so senselessly and so brutally on 9/11 if they think those who died were just crime victims, like people who get mugged in the street.

Criminals seek money or power so that they can make money, or else they are psychopaths who murder for some deranged personal purpose of their own (like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy). The terrorists are out to impose a murderous, oppressive and totalitarian Islamofacist ideology across the world -- yes, much as Hitler and Stalin were. And anyone who can't grasp that simple distinction has no business being anywhere near the levers of power.

Read this piece. It is a reminder of just how high the stakes in 2004 are. President Bush believes that when terrorists -- who subscribe to an ideology that embraces death and sanction the mass murder of innocents -- target America, we must hunt them down and kill them. Kerry believes that we must reason sweetly with them, in conjunction with the diplomats of the United Nations, and send law enforcement officers to apprehend them.

It's clear Kerry's views creeped out even the Times Magazine reporter -- no right-wing conservative he. Here's how the piece concluded:

"[Kerry's] less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying -- and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign -- in a world where the twin towers still stood."

Amen to that. Kerry's is a vision of a 9/10 America that, sadly but truly, is no more.