Sacrificing the ends for the sake of the means

townhall.com ^ | 8/06/04 | Jonah Goldberg

[kattracks]

[snip]

Regardless, for Kerry the vital issue is playing nicely with others. The New Republic's Peter Beinart recently wrote, "Intellectually, Kerry knows he must show he'd go after the terrorists with a vengeance. But that's not where his heart lies. The topic that arouses his greatest passion-the one that has guided his entire career-is improving America's relations with the world." In his 1997 book, Kerry called for the creation of an "entirely new, multilateral code of behavior." In 1993, during the confirmation hearings for Warren Christopher, Kerry called for "an all-out effort to strengthen international institutions." Two years later, Kerry broke with many Senate Democrats and voted against lifting the Bosnian arms embargo, mostly because he wanted Europeans to like us. The Washington Post reported that when Bill Clinton called America the "indispensable nation" in his second inaugural address, Kerry lamented Clinton's "arrogant, obnoxious tone."

And, Beinart notes, "even the 1991 Gulf war, which Kerry's aides now cite as a model of multilateral cooperation, struck him as suspiciously unilateral at the time." Back then, Kerry said, the anti-Saddam coalition "lacks a true United Nations collective security effort, with the full measure of international cooperation and burden-sharing."

This is all consistent with liberal rhetoric for the last three years. How many times have we been told that George W. Bush "squandered" the good will of the world "community" after 9/11? The assumption behind all of this seemed to be that anything which cost America the support of allies like France or Germany was, in effect, too costly. In other words, the means-"strong alliances"-are more important than the ends-winning the war on terror, toppling Saddam, and so forth. Listening to these folks, one gets the sense that America's greatest foreign policy triumph was to get sucker-punched on 9/11

[snip}

[Quix]

THANKS.

WHOLE ARTICLE SENT TO MY EMAIL LIST.

[Steven W.]

Listening to these folks, one gets the sense that America's greatest foreign policy triumph was to get sucker-punched on 9/11 because it resulted in sympathetic newspaper headlines in Paris and Berlin.

The liberal fools mistake somewhat ill-conceived sympathy for respect.

ill-conceived sympathy is the kind of nice things which were said by the French and others on 9/11 and 9/12 before they went back to writing "The US deserved it" and other typical crap starting 9/12 or 9/13.

Respect is when Ghadafi tells the Prime Minister of Italy that he realizes he must give up his WMD because otherwise Bush will kick his sorry butt.

[Howlin]

I found this tonight while surfing:



Kerry, given the honor of delivering the Class Day oration his senior year, tore up his original speech after it had been published in an official campus journal and delivered one with a sharply skeptical political tone. He criticized the Johnson administration for a military venture that did not advance the nation's vital interests and that effectively isolated the United States from the international community.

But by that time, Kerry had already committed himself to seeking a Navy commission, knowing it would probably expose him to combat in Vietnam.

"This was 1966," said Thorne, who, like Kerry and Barbiero, also was headed for Vietnam. "By 1968, I'm not so sure we would have made the decision to serve. I'll speak for myself, . . . this was truly a moving train, a transitional moment of great significance for all of us, and the country as well."