Friday, September 03, 2004

Cuomo on terrorism

Kudos to Mario Cuomo for not being partisan in his comments on the "war on terror" last night. Perhaps taking his cue from the editorial page of the New York Times rather than Democratic Party flacks, he argued that the war on terror isn't a "war" in a conventional sense, but rather more akin to the war on poverty, on crime, and on violence. In the latter usage, these things will always be with us -- just as George W. said the other day.

I realize that "politically" this was considered a flip-flop, but let's get real. Progressives have argued for a long time that the war on terror would succeed less with strategies like military pre-emption than with law-enforcement methods -- which presumes that terrorism is something we have to try to prevent, but is not something we can ever fully eradicate.

No comments: