Liberal Talk Radio

Through all of these long months since 9/11/01, we’ve been bombarded with grim visions of a war without end. Our “leader” insists that this current war will be a long slog. Failing to articulate a vision of victory, Bush frames this war as no less than the ultimate struggle between good and evil — truly the pre-apocalyptic battle that can end only in defeat or Rapture.

But, as the Guderians and Von Mannsteins that seem to inform so much of the President’s neo-Con foreign policy would admit, it is impossible to win final victory unless you have a clear idea of what victory means. I.e., you cannot know you have been successful without first defining success. This is as true in foreign affairs as it is in the conduct of one’s own life — a born-again, MBA president like Bush should at least be familiar with this bit of Zig Ziglar/Tony Robbins-style personal improvement theory.

So Bush gives us no vision, save a final victory that he himself admits is not possible — surely even less possible without a comprehensive plan to ameliorate the poor living conditions that give rise to global terror. And we are left only with the alternative of perpetual war.

Until this past weekend, when, finally, an American leader has given us a clear idea of what victory might mean.

In this past weekend’s New York Times Magazine, John Kerry states: ”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”

Now, take a deep breath, America. You might want a president who sugarcoats things, but this is the best you’re going to get. Terrorism is an unfortunate fact of our lives. Until we eliminate global poverty, provide meaningful work for everyone in the world who wants it, and create new wealth and opportunities for every person on this planet, some young people are always going to be angry and jealous, and willing to engage in the deadly game of one-upsmanship called terrorism. And even if all those problems were solved, there would still be sociopaths.

Once you’ve accepted the inevitability of terror, it’s still possible to envision a world free of perpetual orange and yellow alerts, and free of presidents hell bent on knocking over any tin pot despot who disagrees with American hegemony.

And this is what Kerry did in the NYT Mag article — provided an alternative vision of this war on terror, and defined a winning outcome.

We all need to understand that the fact that terror isn’t going away doesn’t mean we can’t minimize it, and this is exactly what Kerry points out. Terror can indeed be a “nuisance” — much like it is to many Israelis, albeit at a far higher level of constant alert than what we might be able to handle here. But the most important thing is that, finally, we have a leader who can articulate an acheivable vision for the future — one that accepts the inevitability of terror, but one that returns America to a state approaching that which was before 9/11 — the “new normalcy.”