07/10/2004 Entry: "John Kerry's moral failure"

John Kerry's campaign site discusses national security priorities:

John Kerry believes that HIV/AIDS is the great public health and humanitarian crisis of our times – and a fundamental security issue.  He believes that fighting AIDS – and tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, the other two most deadly global infectious diseases – must be at the forefront of America’s foreign policy and national security agendas

Like corrupt government structures, the prevenlance of AIDS and other serious diseases in undeveloped cultures makes it far harder for those cultures to find their way out of their messes. These diseases may make it more difficult for those cultures to take seriously the notion that their problems are internally solveable and thus make them more inclined to instead blame their problems on us and attempt to destroy us. In this sense, one might argue that AIDS and other serious diseases present a serious security problem

But to argue that eradicating the diseases ought to be at the forefront of our national security agenda and foriegn policy is to put the cart before the horse. The threat to our national security comes from the moral problems of other cultures, not their physical problems. It is essential to the security of moral civilization that we cause these cultures get out of their moral insolvencey. Although this necessarily involves help with certain phyiscal problems (for instance, we must help Iraq with security and infatructure), this is a means to fixing the moral problems and not a primary security aim in itself. A man who can see only the phyiscal problems and none of the moral problems cannot fight this war and is not fit to be President.