Frustration rarely brings out the best in people. Many times, the stress causes people to get more extreme and lose context for their issues. That's about the only charitable explanation I can make for Ralph Nader's remarks yesterday in remembrance of 9/11, in which he not only asserted that the US has no enemies but that terrorism is overrated:

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader told supporters Saturday that a far larger number of Americans die each year from poverty, hunger, pollution, dangerous jobs or poor access to high-quality health care than terrorism.

"Who weeps for these people?" Nader asked before remarking that it would take a press release from al-Qaida to get Democrats and Republicans to pay attention to the nation's social ills.

Nader met with about 175 supporters in a Philadelphia church as many Americans observed the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Despite those attacks, Nader said, the United States has "no major enemy" in the world to fight and called on the major political parties to "end the politics of fear."

So Ralph Nader, rather than acknowledge the terrible destruction and senseless mass murder that occured three years ago, Nader wanted to talk about social programs. Okay, fine, but that seems just a bit tone-deaf. But to say that America has no major enemy just three years after 9/11 suggests a significant disconnect from reality. This isn't even the European approach, where they acknowledge the enemy but think appeasement might actually work, now that they've had 66 years to refine the approach.

Nader's speech yesterday equates to looking at Ground Zero in Manhattan and determining that the cause of the 3,000 murders was faulty building design. We regularly chastise John Kerry for waffling towards taking a law-enforcement approach to terrorism, but Nader ups the ante: he would treat it as an OSHA case. Perhaps the Kerry campaign should reconsider Nader's value to their candidate and quit blocking his attempts to make the ballot in each state, because right now, Nader makes Kerry look resolute.

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