We live in a country with walls, and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns...

Mickey Kaus has his four steps for a Kerry election win (scroll down to Monday July 26, his site doesn't appear to have permalinks).

Number 2 is interesting:

2. Return to 'Return to Normalcy': Peggy Noonan's insight, which is that Americans crave a respite from Bush's frenetic history-making, doesn't mean we can go back to happier pre-9/11 days. Everyone knows we can't. But we can take a break from the abnormal, over-leverage- and over-heated presidential decision making process that led us into Iraq and to the brink of a violent, generations-long global "clash of civilizations." At this point, Kerry's over-deliberativeness may be just what's called for.

When I talk to people who are against the Iraq war, or the Patriot act, or other anti-terrorism Bush policies, I frequently feel a hugely insurmountable obstacle between their views and mine - I think that we are engaged in a struggle for the very continuation of our way of life, and they don't.

When you believe that civilization is in danger, you tend to be willing to sacrifice a few civil liberties and take action against countries that you feel are significant threats, even without absolutely perfect intelligence or approval of every country in the world. You realize that the struggle you are engaged in is different from previous struggles, and it means acting differently than your country has acted in the past. It also means that sometimes you will take action that may not seem as wise as it did earlier - but it's done with knowledge that the costs of not acting may be higher than the costs of acting too early or too much.

I firmly believe that Islamofacist terrorism is a huge threat to our civilization. I think that there are small but very powerful groups of Muslims who want to make the entire world follow Sharia law, and want to kill anyone who doesn't. I believe that these people will do whatever possible to destroy our way of life, and that we need to do whatever is necessary to stop that from happening.

Bush didn't start this battle. He simply responded to it because 9/11 was the first time that many people, myself included, realized that this struggle existed. However, this struggle has been going on for years - on U.S. soil since at least '93, and throughout the world earlier. The clash of civilizations that Kaus alludes to isn't something Bush invented, it's simply something that he realized was reality and responded to as best he could.

The fact is that the terrorists, the Islamofacists, aren't going to take a break. If we relax our defenses and become less proactive in fighting terrorism here and abroad, they will seize those opportunities and hit us harder. When someone's coming at me with a gun, the last thing I want is someone whose own supporters describe as exhibiting "over-deliberativeness".