Schoolchildren across America have forever loathed the dreaded summer reading list. Having just completed a grueling academic year filled with long division and state capital memorization, most kids cringe when that inevitable envelope from next year's homeroom teacher arrives, prompting a non-optional trip to the public library. Pre-emptive homework? Leave us alone! A similar bitter pill is in order for some Congressional leaders. This summer, Americans should request that two prominent Democrats take a few moments away from sandcastle construction or lemonade stand operation ($1.99 per cup after taxes) to read two books that may help clarify some recently-demonstrated confusion.
Pupil: Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA)
Quote: "We were basically at peace [before September 11th]."
Assignment: Willful Blindness; A Memoir of the Jihad by Andrew McCarthy
(Note: Willful Blindness is available FREE w/ a subscription to Townhall Magazine)
Senator Kerry's rhetorical gem reminds tens of millions of Americans why they pulled the lever for President Bush four years ago. America was by no means "at peace" on September 10, 2001; A ruthless cabal of killers had declared war against us many years earlier, but we were disastrously slow to acknowledge the battle. Usually one hand clapping results in silence, but Al Qaeda's lone hand produced quite a bit of noise in the decade leading up to 9/11: Six civilians dead and hundreds injured in the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Dozens of American military personnel killed in the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings. Hundreds slain in explosions at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Radical Islam was doing its very best to get our attention, but willful blindness from both political parties swept the continued threat under the rug until 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered. Tragically, this blindness still afflicts many Washington elites.
To prove this single ludicrous assertion wasn't a fluke, Kerry has spent the last week defending the man who upstaged him at his own convention in 2004. Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama has been extremely supportive of efforts to confer the rights of US citizens to terrorists, and John Kerry is reporting for duty to defend him on this point. The Kerry-Obama propensity toward tackling terrorism as if it were an exercise in law enforcement is symptomatic of a pre-9/11 mentality that the nation cannot afford its leaders to adopt.
Andrew McCarthy is the former federal attorney who prosecuted the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing. His book outlines, in excruciating and frustrating detail, the folly of wearing legal blinders when confronting the terrorists' declared war against us. Indictments and subpoenas simply won't deter hijackers and dirty bombers. Kerry's preposterous assertion about pre-9/11 peace, and his apparent enthusiasm for the Boumediene Supreme Court decision, must sound like nails on a chalkboard to McCarthy. After all, he's experienced firsthand the profound inadequacy of the American criminal justice system in dealing with our mortal enemies. Kerry should take a day off from windsurfing and read McCarthy's important book.
His book report is due before he once again accuses John McCain of being "out of touch."
Pupil: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
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