Posted on: Friday, September 3, 2004

EDITORIAL
A good speech and an unfair controversy

President Bush's star-spangled, well-received convention acceptance speech last night hit all the notes his Republican faithful had hoped for.

He offered up an ambitious (if perhaps expensive) agenda of "compassionate" domestic programs; he firmly and unapologetically defended his foreign policy; and he cleverly, almost tauntingly, deconstructed the record of his opponent, John Kerry.

But prior to that capstone speech, Bush set off an unnecessary and, frankly, unfair firestorm of criticism with a chance remark on terrorism he delivered during an interview on NBC.

While Bush might have been clearer, his underlying thought was exactly correct. Demo-crats who hope to use his remark as proof that he is not the resolute commander-in-chief he says he is are off the mark.

Here's what the president said when asked about the war on terrorism:

"I don't think you can win it," he said, adding "I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

"Aha!" yelped the Kerry campaign, issuing a statement headlined "Bush flip-flops on winning the war on terror."

Bush immediately went into damage-control mode, assuring audiences that he intends to win this war.

He needn't have bothered. What Bush said was only the obvious: You cannot "win" a war on "terror" any more than you can "win" a war against violence. Terror is a technique, not an enemy.

It may be possible to beat, or at least subdue, those who currently are using the weapon of terror against the United States. But as long as the United States has enemies of any stripe and as long as terror remains a weapon in the hands of those who are relatively powerless in the conventional sense, the war on terror will continue.