Anyone see this in the NYTimes today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/politics/17home.htmlMr. Chertoff's remarks, in an interview and a speech at George Washington University, reflected his view that the Department of Homeland Security must transform itself from an enterprise set up in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks to one engaged in a more focused, sustainable and reasoned battle against terrorism.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," he said.
The federal government needs to have a more restrained and coordinated public message than it had in the first Bush term when it comes to discussing potential threats, the secretary said. That might mean he and other department officials will decline to comment at times about rumored threats until definitive information is available, he said. He did not mention the department's much-criticized color-coded alert system but has said previously he was assessing it.
"I don't want to get up in public and say the sky is falling if it's not falling," he said. "I'm going to try to be very realistic and sensible and serious about the kinds of tradeoffs that we have to consider when we're making decisions about protecting ourselves."
Hmmm, this is what Kerry got in trobule for telling the NYTimes Magazine on 10/10/04:
But when you listen carefully to what Bush and Kerry say, it becomes clear that the differences between them are more profound than the matter of who can be more effective in achieving the same ends. Bush casts the war on terror as a vast struggle that is likely to go on indefinitely, or at least as long as radical Islam commands fealty in regions of the world. In a rare moment of either candor or carelessness, or perhaps both, Bush told Matt Lauer on the "Today" show in August that he didn't think the United States could actually triumph in the war on terror in the foreseeable future. "I don't think you can win it," he said -- a statement that he and his aides tried to disown but that had the ring of sincerity to it. He and other members of his administration have said that Americans should expect to be attacked again, and that the constant shadow of danger that hangs over major cities like New York and Washington is the cost of freedom. In his rhetoric, Bush suggests that terrorism for this generation of Americans is and should be an overwhelming and frightening reality.
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."
This analogy struck me as remarkable, if only because it seemed to throw down a big orange marker between Kerry's philosophy and the president's. Kerry, a former prosecutor, was suggesting that the war, if one could call it that, was, if not winnable, then at least controllable. If mobsters could be chased into the back rooms of seedy clubs, then so, too, could terrorists be sent scurrying for their lives into remote caves where they wouldn't harm us. Bush had continually cast himself as the optimist in the race, asserting that he alone saw the liberating potential of American might, and yet his dark vision of unending war suddenly seemed far less hopeful than Kerry's notion that all of this horror -- planes flying into buildings, anxiety about suicide bombers and chemicals in the subway -- could somehow be made to recede until it was barely in our thoughts.
Anybody else see this? (Or am I crazy? hmm, better not make that an either or thing.)
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