Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that includes the creation of a 10,000-person civilian peace corps to stem the tide of terrorism in weak and unstable countries.

Mr. Edwards’s plan, which he presented in Manhattan yesterday, comes less than a week after he called President Bush’s war on terror a “bumper sticker slogan” and said the current national security strategy has not made America safer.

Despite the criticism those comments are drawing, the Democratic presidential candidate did not back down from his position yesterday and said the president’s strategy has undermined the country’s long-term safety and led to a worn-out military.

Mr. Edwards, who has garnered strong support among anti-war Democrats, also took a swipe at Mayor Giuliani, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

“If Mayor Giuliani believes that what President Bush has done is good and wants to run a campaign for the presidency saying, ‘I will give you four more years of what this president has given you,’ then he is allowed to do that,” the former North Carolina senator said. “He will never be elected president of the United States, but he is allowed to do that.”

The comment elicited a testy response from the Giuliani campaign, which has focused largely on the former mayor’s leadership after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and his aggressive strategy for dealing with Islamic fundamentalists.

“We are glad to see Rudy’s criticism of the Democrats not understanding the terrorists’ war on us is starting to register with them,” Mr. Giuliani’s communications director, Katie Levinson, said. “John Edwards’s track record of predicting election outcomes speaks for itself.”

The plan Mr. Edwards presented yesterday — which he dubbed “A Strategy to Shut Down Terrorists and Stop Terrorism Before It Starts” — calls for a 10,000-person “Marshall Corps” to deal with issues ranging from worldwide poverty and economic development to clean drinking water and micro-lending. He said investing in those areas would shore up weak nations and help ensure that terrorism does not take root there. That, he said, would allow the country to stop potential terrorists before they even join the ranks.

There are “thousands committed to violence” today, he said, and America needs to use all of its tools to go after them. But he said millions more people are “sitting on the fence” about whether to join those ranks. “We have to offer them a hand to our side instead of a shove to the other side of that fence,” he said.

Mr. Edwards proposed creating a Cabinet-level position to oversee the initiative, which he said would require international allies.
The president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, said he was “skeptical” of Mr. Edwards’s proposal.

“Humanitarian aid is a good thing. I approve of that. But it doesn’t really have much to do with the causes of terrorism,” Mr. May said. “Mohamed Atta, the lead terrorist on 9/11, was based in Germany, was well-educated. The causes of terrorism are several, but poverty is not one of them.”

Mr. Edwards is also proposing shifting more responsibility for tactical and operational decisions to military personnel from civilian leaders.
He said he would double the budget for military recruiting in order to reduce waivers for recruits with felonies. According to the Edwards campaign, those waivers have skyrocketed under Mr. Bush.

Mr. Edwards has called for withdrawing troops from Iraq and has called on Congress to cut off funding for the war. Unlike Senator Clinton, who disputed his comments that America is less safe today than it was before the so-called war on terror began, Mr. Edwards is tacking to the left. While Mrs. Clinton is seeking to create the impression that the Democrats generally hold the same position on the war, Mr. Edwards is attempting to do the opposite.

Yesterday, he was quick to respond to critics who have cast him as lily-livered and weak on national security.

“I think what we’ve seen with President Bush is that he uses this doctrine to stifle debate,” Mr. Edwards said. “He doesn’t want anyone to speak out in opposition. If you speak out in opposition, you either don’t understand the threat or you’re not a patriot.”

“It doesn’t help that the Republican presidential candidates seem intent on trying to one-up each other, each of them trying to be a bigger, badder George Bush,” he added. “I think they want to be George Bush on steroids.”