Posted on 07/31/2004 8:47:37 AM PDT by Isara
The Nominee: John Kerry's acceptance speech Thursday night was the most keenly awaited Democratic address on foreign policy in decades. It turned out to be heavy on symbolism, but light on substance. We await the details.
Everywhere you looked at FleetCenter, you saw American flags and photos of Kerry as a young man in Vietnam. And time and again in his speech, Kerry returned to that experience.
The idea, no doubt, was to reassure Americans in the middle of a war on terror that the party of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Michael Moore could really be trusted in a national security crisis.
We doubt many people were convinced. We certainly weren't.
Kerry's supporters may think that contrasting Kerry's 4 1/2 months in Vietnam with George W. Bush's service in the National Guard will be favorable to them. It won't. The questions arise all too quickly.
Yes, Kerry served in Vietnam for roughly 130 days. But it's the 35 years since, as both private citizen and senator, that we wonder about.
To say Kerry's speech was short on specifics is putting it mildly. Indeed, it contained none — as if the senator and his handlers figured it's enough to say, "We're not George Bush," and the election is his. Elections, however, are won not on heavy-handed symbolism, but on ideas and qualifications.
"Judge me on my record," Kerry said. Very well:
What have you done since 1969? We know about 1971, when you appeared before a Senate committee, admitted to "war crimes" and suggested that your fellow soldiers went on bloody rampages worthy of "Genghis Khan."
And we remember your long leadership of the anti-war movement — during the Paris Peace Talks, for example, when you met on the sidelines with communist officials from North Vietnam.
And who can forget the 1980s, when you supported the nuclear freeze — one of the nuttier ideas to come out of your party's far left wing? If you and your fellow freezeniks had won that debate, chances are we'd still be talking about the Soviet Union in the present tense.
On the Gulf War you voted "no" — which in hindsight also seems pretty silly. On the war in Iraq, you voted "yes" — but then backed off when Bush asked for $87 billion so our troops would have the means to win it.
Is this what you call leadership? Sounds more like a classic case of having it both ways politically.
Which brings us back to the present. After listening to Sen. Kerry on Thursday night, and reviewing his record, we'll be darned if we know what he'd do about Iraq. Or, for that matter, about the war on terror.
We do know his "only justification" for war would be to "protect the American people (and) fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." Which sounds fine, until you parse it.
Such a formulation could be used to preclude nearly any U.S. military action outside our borders. Like Haiti in 1994 and Kosovo in 1999. Strictly speaking, neither qualifies under his criteria. Yet he supported both.
(And what about genocide in the Sudan today? Would Kerry do nothing?)
Behind the tough talk that he'll "never hesitate to use force when it is required," and his pledge to add 40,000 troops (but not in Iraq), Kerry's words mask what is really good old-fashioned isolationism. Wait until the bully bloodies your nose, then hit back — maybe. But only if you can get the French and the Germans to sign off.
All this may cheer and even comfort party activists. But not average Americans. We suspect they'll want Kerry to fill in the blanks on his resume, and then explain how it all makes a case for replacing the current commander in chief in the middle of a war.
That is, after all, the job for which he has applied — not warrior in chief, as the Democrats, with their carefully staged military group hug, seem to think.
The incumbent may not have had a record on national security when he asked for the job four years ago. But he does now. He's had to mobilize a nation to fight a war against terror in far-flung corners of the world. And he did it while getting a struggling economy back on its feet.
Now, that's a resume.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
"Kerry's 4 1/2 months in Vietnam with George W. Bush's service in the National Guard will be favorable to them. It won't. "
The Kerry folks think they're running against Bush's National guard service.
But they are running against his War on Terror service. And they will lose.
Looks like a general consensus of his platitudinal speech. Full of empty rhetoric. What a pontificating buffoon. Didn't even have the sense to see how ridiculous he appeared in the rabbit suit. And after listening to some of the swift boat crew members who served with him, his Vietnam record is suspect, as far as I am concerned. And that's all he's running on.
The incumbent may not have had a record on national security when he asked for the job four years ago. But he does now. He's had to mobilize a nation to fight a war against terror in far-flung corners of the world. And he did it while getting a struggling economy back on its feet.
Bush/Cheney 2004
Gilligan's taxi service did not compare to any fighter jocky's in the danger department. He got a bronze star for lifting a guy out of the water (atta boy) and a silver star for grounding his boat jumping off and murdering a wounded gook. Woopti-doo. He should have been court marshalled for putting his entire crew in danger.
We got thousands of guys in Iraq and Afganistan that can show where Kerry can put his purple hearts. I know a retired marine general who also was awarded the silver star. He called artillery down on his own position when they were overrun. I have yet to hear what that general has to say about Gilligan's silver star.
Gilligan. I like it.
It is one thing to pretend to be commander in chief, yet another thing to actually BE commander in chief.
What I really got a kick out of was sKerry's campaign putting out that they won't release their economic plan until after the election.
That'll get some pocket book votes. The GOP had better hammer away about this, about how sKerry-Chaser are talking down the economy, about skerry's only position on the economy voiced so far is to rescind the tax cuts and raise taxes for those making over $200,000 (a sizable segment of the population that consistently votes).
Bring it on, John.
Excellent, except Kerry is not an ideological isolationist. He will intervene in global crises, like Clinton, not based on principle, but when, and only when, it advances his own power.
Was Kerry in Vietnam? This is the first I've heard on the topic.
Bush's National Guard sevice is nothing to be ashamed of, and the Bush Campaign better stop hiding from it. Kerry is not reluctant to use his 22 April 1971 Senate testimony video in his campaign ads, even brags about how he shortened the war with his traitorous lies. The Bush people better start being proactive and not responding to Kerry's latest fictions.
The Bush people are letting Kerry focus exclusively on 4 1/2 months of weird heroism, and afraid to talk about his sedition after his active Navy service, and his law breaking in 1970-72 as an active Navy Reservist. It's like focusing on Benedict Arnold as the wounded hero of Saratoga, and blocking out everything he did thereafter.
Karl Rove is not a genius, He has failed to get 50% of the vote in any national election.
Very well said!!
Like I keep saying, I am counting on GWB pulling off the gloves and telling the truth loud and long for once.
If he loses this election and sends this country hurtling towards destruction because he listens to Rove and pulls his punches, I will revile him as long as I live. You will not want to hear what I will have to say.
But I sincerely expect him to pull out the big guns and stomp a mudhole in Kerry.
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