Keep Us Safe

In a recent essay Charles Krauthammer suggests that President Bush "remains popular in his party" because of "his singular achievement: He's kept us safe." But what is safe and who is us?

Since 9.11 we have lost another World Trade Center’s worth of young people: military service people in Iraq and Afganistan [and thousands more that have been severely damaged]. Do they not count as ‘us’ because they died overseas? Had they been killed in attacks on domestic military bases their deaths would be a measure of our lack of safety. Why does it matter where they died?

There have also been tends of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and over two million displaced -- the equivalent of 30 million Americans when adjusted for population size.

Since Mr. Krauthammer knows all this, he must be suggesting that Mr. Bush gets credit for keeping American civilians safe even though that safety comes at the expense of American soldiers overseas and civilians in other countries. We feel bad about their loss, of course, but since it keeps us safe at home sacrificing them for our benefit must be acceptable.

We do not, of course, consider it in any way legitimate for others to put our people in danger in order to protect themselves or advance their own interests. That would be terrorism.