September 12, 2004 - To mark the third anniversary of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington that claimed the lives of 2,700 people from 80 countries the President of the United States attacked Senator Kerry of having more positions on the Iraq war than the 99 other United States Senators. President Bush used the occasion to claim that if John Kerry had his way Saddam Hussein would still be in power. That may be so. Had it been John Kerry conducting the War on Terror a contained Saddam Hussein may well have still been sitting in Baghdad dreaming his grandiose dreams; 40 Million ordinary Iraqis might not have been free to dodge from house to house in an endless crossfire of occupation; resistance and civil war; and most importantly the international alliance that Bin Laden ushered into existence on that fateful day might have brought Bin Laden to justice, either before an American court or the throne of God.

Had John Kerry had his way the French and German troops who soldier on today beside 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan might have had the support and resources necessary to bring that eternal war to a successful end, not just routing the Taliban but rooting it out. Had John Kerry had his way the international alliance that proclaimed, “We are all Americans” three years ago today might still be intact, strong and effective in its effort to rein in the pale horse of radical Islamic terrorism instead of having been fractured and its force dissipated in a war to find illusory weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The President and his Secretary of Defense claim that three fourths of Al Qaeda’s leaders are either dead or captured. They claim that as a victory in the war on terror. The fruits of that victory are as illusory as the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russia is burying its dead and so is Jakarta. Madrid and Morocco and Bali have buried their dead. Those are all the fruits of the all but abandoned manhunt on the margins of the East. Whether it is two thirds of the Al Qaeda leadership or three quarters that Bush and Rumsfeld claim Bin Laden is still striking terror around the world while America diverted its attention to the Iraqi oil fields while Bin Laden’s trail grew colder and colder.

George W. Bush is not leading a war on the terrorists; he abandoned it when his strike on the Taliban did not produce the results he expected. When the enemy proved as elusive from American forces as he had from the Soviets a decade before, the President chose to build up an enemy whose location he thought he knew in the public mind to divert attention from his failure to bring Bin Laden to justice.

It is a record of wasting alliances, wasting time and wasting lives. We are no safer now than we were three years ago. We are no closer to dismantling the Al Qaeda network than we were three years ago. It is a record of irresolution and half measures. It is a record that is no less of a failure than were the bipartisan failures of Vietnam. The only dominos that have fallen as a result of this mistaken war have been our alliances, once solid and now shattered.