As Bill Whittle so eloquently explained, that is the difference in approach we are voting for. I mean it when I say that if you don't have time to understand the difference between the approaches, you should stay home November 2nd. While I do think one can read the case and not be persuaded to abandon the carrot approach, the evidence in my mind is overwhelming that the stick is absolutely essential at this point.

Consider yesterdays events in Egypt, and the reaction in Cairo (see last sentence in that story). Worse than the celebration of the attacks, the Egyptian police wouldn't even let Israeli rescue workers and medical teams in for hours. Egypt is a country that gets a lot of carrots from us - nearly two billion dollars in foreign aid annually. Those carrots were a reward to Egypt's secular government for it agreeing to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The result? Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the a group led by the future co-founder of Al Queda.

Another problem with the carrot approach is that we aren't the only one with carrots. Not only that, but some of those we thought were our friends would rather have ill gotten carrots than continued friendship, according the Duelfer report. If all you hear is Kerry campaign speeches and CBS News, you may be shocked to learn that the Duelfer report was over 1000 pages along and not just a sticky note saying "Bush lied - there are no WMD." It says that sanctions were being ignored, Saddam was bribing France (imagine that), China, and Russia to use their UN Security Council seats to lobby against sanctions and to thwart weapons inspectors and forestall war with the US. Once the sanctions were lifted, he would have rapidly reacquired WMD. Bottom line, he believed the carrots he was offering would protect him from the stick long enough for him to get his own stick. Based on the actions of our "allies," he was probably right in his belief.

Personally, I don't think we can wait around for an American Beslan. It isn't some remote impossibility. The terrorists know that it would be impossible in our free society to provide enough security for us to be safe by assuming a defensive posture. Our only good option is deterrence. The stick has been an effective deterrent to attacks in this country for 3 years now, but the job is not done. There will be a time for carrots, that time is not now.