The War of the Hacks

Their targets of opportunity are endless. So are their potential victims. That is what makes the Osama bin Ladens of this world true global menaces whom Congress and the White House ought to be joining forces to combat.

Five years after Sept. 11, the focus of Republicans and Democrats has shifted from the enemy to each other. But the forces that killed nearly 3,000 people in America still consider their enemy to be those of us who call America home. And the enemy targets this nation in the true spirit of equal opportunity -- without regard to race, creed, age, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or religion.

Congress and the White House ought to be focusing on defeating that enemy -- not each other. The puerile political nonsense on display on both sides of the Capitol dome must end.

Al-Qaeda, as has been written in this space, bleeds, too. The terrorist ilk that attacked on Sept. 11 must be broken -- not chased, harassed or condemned from a U.N. podium, but broken. That means: Take them down here, there or anywhere they're found.

Bring them before the bar of justice if possible, but by all means, and for as long as it takes, hunt them down. To do any less is to invite more strikes, more body bags, more shattered American lives.

I was looking forward to the day when I could tell my four grandsons and my granddaughter about wars that never came to our shores.

Now they have something to tell me, and not out of their young imaginations. As I noted in a column shortly after Sept. 11, the mother of one of my grandsons' classmates worked at the World Trade Center. Another playmate's father was among the second wave of firefighters to enter the towers.

My grandchildren understand war in a way that I never did at their ages.

Members of Congress, absorbed during a time of war in saving their own political skins, should be ashamed of themselves.

kingc@washpost.com