In the Wall Street Journal on February 18th, John Kerry wrote on a summit where the “White House and State Department will expand the global conversation and, more important, adopt an action agenda that identifies, shares and utilizes best practices in preventing and countering violent extremism.” Well, isn’t this lovely! The trouble though is that Mr. Kerry refuses to clearly identify the enemy that he labels as terrorists and does not provide a clear plan of action.
Kerry has no enemy other than a concept of violent extremism and no plan other than to work together. Kerry and the President seem unwilling or unable to engage Islam into the discussion or to have a serious dialogue.
Kerry says “Eliminating the terrorists of today with force will not guarantee protection from the terrorists of tomorrow.” Maybe so, but it’s a good start! Then he proclaims that “We have to devote ourselves not just to combating violent extremism, but to preventing it.” So who are the collective “we”? It sure would be nice to have names rather than vagaries. Then Kerry pontificates with grand sounding themes like the encouraging the “rule of law”, stopping “corruption”, and giving people “dignity” by having the government take care of their “necessities.”
The Secretary of State and the President fail to find either an identifiable enemy or a coherent approach to its eradication. It all sounds like they are launching a large government entitlement program in-line with combating global warming, income inequality or net neutrality.
Kerry does purport “good governance” as a preventive measure that may include training people for jobs but what jobs exactly are we training people for? How will this combat terrorism? And how will this be implemented; i.e. how much more money will the government take from the taxpayer to fulfill their ego and delusion that they are doing a public good?
No plan can work against an enemy that is not defined: we are perpetually stuck at square one.
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