Sh'ite terrorists. The graffiti states in Arabic 'No more Bush'.
Posted on 08/08/2004 2:57:14 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
Sometimes you'll hear things that are so out of left field, so unexpected, or so troubling that you don't register them at first. Only later, be it seconds or days, do you recall the words with a flicker of surprised recognition. Such was my reaction to yesterday's interview between John Kerry, John Edwards, and NPR's Steve Inskeep. (Realaudio stream here; no official transcript, so all mistakes below are mine.) It's worth going through this piece by piece, not in the spirit of "fisking," which tends to promote shoddy writing and thinking in equal measure, but with the intent to parse. We'll return to a synthesis and conclusion at the end.
The section of the interview we're interested in begins at roughly 3 minutes, 45 seconds into the audio stream:
Inskeep: Moving on to another subject, now -- Iraq. You have said that you would try harder to bring in America's allies. But, that said, if you look ahead a year, two years, if you win this election, how is the situation on the ground in Iraq going to be any different than it is now?
Kerry: Well, it has to be different from the way it is now. It is not safe today. It is not working for Iraqis. I believe it is critical to our success to have a fresh start. This President, regrettably, rushed to war, without a plan to win the peace, he pushed our allies aside, we've lost our credibility with the world, we need to restore that. And I think I can do that.
Inskeep: This is what I'm wondering, though: In a year from now, since you do want to remain committed to Iraq, isn't it the case that there will still be many, many thousands of American troops there, still fighting the insurgents if the insurgents want to fight?
Kerry: Ah, no, not necessarily at all, because I think our diplomacy can produce a very different ingredient on the ground. And if it can't produce a different ingredient on the ground, lemme tell you something, that says something about what Iraqis want, and what the people in the region want. I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq. And, ah, that's my plan.
What do we take away from this? John Kerry asserts that diplomacy will change things in Iraq. John Kerry allows that diplomacy may not change things in Iraq. John Kerry refers to the requisite transformative diplomacy in the context of diplomacy within Iraq and the region. It is this diplomacy that he expects to bring American troops home. Let's move on:
Inskeep: A year from right now? Kerry: Absolutely we could reduce the numbers. You bet.
Edwards: Can I just add to what John's saying? What he's describing just creates an entirely new dynamic. These are not abstract concepts -- he's really thought this through. For example, bringing in NATO, and having a new President, a fresh start, dealing with the international community, can convert this from an American occupation to an international presence helping the Iraqis provide for their own security. So, a year from now, which is what you're asking about....
Inskeep: Sure.
Edwards: ....We could have a completely different dynamic than what we have today in Iraq.
Herein we see more of the mythmaking that drives modern Democrats. Elections they lose are stolen. Those who voted for this war don't include them. Nato is not involved in Iraq. The international presence in Iraq is zero. Viz., British and Italians fighting and dying as you read this; linked above. The strategy of "helping the Iraqis provide for their own security" does not presently exist. Viz., our Iraqi allies fighting and dying as you read this; linked above.
And the greatest myth of all: that the sine qua non of any improvement is a President John F. Kerry. The man who would be him speaks on:
Kerry: Let me give an example. If I get other countries involved in the training of troops, and we're training them more rapidly, the Iraqis themselves can take over a great deal more of their own security. But you need stability to be able to do that. How do you achieve the stability? You need to have more people involved in the process. We have not seen this Administration do the statesmanship, do the diplomacy necessary, and America is paying a very high price both in terms of the lives of our young, and the money that's coming out of the taxpayer's pockets. I will do a better job of building those alliances and getting our troops home. And I will do a much better job of reducing the burden on the National Guard and Reserves and their families who are paying a very high price for the President's rush.
But we've already seen, other countries are involved in the training of troops. And is it not something of a poor plan that depends wholly upon the unproven and historically untrustworthy goodwill and independent volition of other nations? In his acceptance speech at the DNC, Kerry vowed: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security." And yet, his plan of action here does just that: indeed, it is premised upon those nations whom he assumes will treat him well not exercising that veto.
And if they do? If the hope-and-pray option doesn't work? What then? John Kerry does not say. Indeed, like the neocon ideologues he decries, it does not appear to occur to him that Option A may fail. And like them, he will proceed with the intended consequence of Option A even in its absence.
Inskeep: Regarding the effort to reduce the burden on the National Guard -- you've promised there will be an additional 40,000 US troops. You've said --
Kerry: Active duty. Not in Iraq.
Inskeep: -- and you want to double the size of the Special Forces.
Kerry: Yes.
Inskeep: Given that it will take some time to build up those forces --
Kerry: Yes it will.
Inskeep: -- and given that you want to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq rather quickly, within a few months after assuming office --
Kerry: Well, those are two different situations.
Inskeep: Well, I want to know -- the question is, I want to know where are you intending for those troops to be used?
Kerry: We have huge obligations around the world still. North Korea ... we have Europe ... uh, Bosnia, Kosovo. We're not even doing what we probably ought to be doing in Darfur, in Africa. This Administration never responded fast enough to Liberia because of how overextended we are. So I believe --
Edwards: And reducing the burden on our Reserves and our Guard.
Kerry: -- the way you do it is by getting those active duty in place over a period of time. Now, ultimately, I want to reduce the size. I want to reduce the deployments. And if we have the proper effort over the next few years, my vision with respect to North Korea, and our presence in Europe, if the European defense force emerges, as they are talking of it, we can begin really bring some of America's troops home and begin to reduce our overall military burden. But for the moment, for this moment in time, we need these extra personnel.
Inskeep: Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, thanks very much.
We have already here noted the Kerry plan, cribbed from an extant plan of Rumsfeld's DoD, for an increase of 40,000 men in our armed forces (presumably meant for the Army). Now we see that even though those men are meant to compensate for a shortfall in wartime, they will not be sent to the actual theater of war. (Let us note, by the bye, that both Rumsfeld's actual 30,000 and Kerry's imaginary 40,000 are both insufficient to truly cover the shortfalls at hand.) One might rightly ask whether they will free up other soldiers to go to war themselves; one would then have to note that this would involve both a rupture in the Army's current standards of enlistment -- by which you are, ultimately, sent wherever the Army pleases -- and a negation of John Kerry's own obvious dogged determination to reduce troop levels in Iraq no matter what.
And it's not just in Iraq -- he envisions a reduction of American military commitments abroad in all theaters. Kerry simultaneously reproaches the Bush Administration for not getting militarily involved in more operational theaters -- Liberia, Darfur -- and speaks of a desire to withdraw around the world. It is a desire so strong that he is already mentally offloading strategic responsibilities to entities, like the pan-European defense force, that do not exist in any meaningful form. It is a desire so strong that he is quite obviously prepared do to it no matter what.
Think about that last bit. Think back to the interview excerpt's beginning. John Kerry avers that "diplomacy" can secure a peace or stability of sorts from groups and peoples with whom we are at war and whom we have yet to defeat. This, he asserts, will create the conditions for troop withdrawals. Oh, and if it doesn't? Because it won't: "[I]f it can't produce a different ingredient on the ground, lemme tell you something, that says something about what Iraqis want, and what the people in the region want." The rhetorical ground is prepared. The will-of-the-people rhetoric is deployed. The stage for the grim, resolute, yielding-to-reality (so unlike those neocons!) President John F. Kerry is set. Remember: if every best-case scenario for withdrawal doesn't work; if diplomacy(!) mysteriously fails to sway murderous fanatics to goodwill; if the French don't abruptly dispatch the Foreign Legion to Anbar Province; and if big-hearted Europeans don't immediately begin training thousands of Jeffersonian-minded Iraqis -- in short,
if there's still a war to be won:
He's going to withdraw anyway.
Remember. Mark it well. He's going to withdraw anyway. His plan, such as it is, and predicated entirely upon third parties acting just so, could not work at all: and he will withdraw. Beyond Iraq, we are enmeshed in a titanic, global war on terror: and he speaks of withdrawing from every corner of that globe. It's not a strategy motivated by careful thought or the nuance for which he is so justly famous. It's an idee fixe. It is retreat and retrenchment as ends in themselves. It is an abdication of the American role in the world not seen since the bitter days of the 1970s. I said before that it took me some time to process the import of Kerry's words in this interview. I drove on to work, and I sat and thought it through. And then I typed the transcript out. And then I realized just what the man is proposing to do.
He's going to withdraw anyway.
John Kerry vaulted into public life on the bloodied backs of the millions of slaughtered, enslaved and expelled Indochinese who suffered their fates -- and still suffer their fates -- because he and those like him achieved their policy victories back in those aforementioned bitter days. One might expect lessons learned from the experience: some measure of empathy or compassion for the victims deprived of the shield of American might and ideals. It was, after all, not merely the only thing keeping them somewhat free: it was the only thing keeping a few millions of them alive. But it seems he has learned precisely nothing. Now, three decades later, in Iraq and around the world there is another bitter fight -- and there is the same instinct to cut and run, dressed up in fantastical hypotheticals and dronings-on about priorities. What man wishes to be President of the United States, even as he wishes to not win its wars? The names McClellan, McGovern, Debs, and Thomas spring to mind.
He's going to withdraw anyway.
I've had my profound problems with George W. Bush's handling of Iraq. His strategic management has been uneven; his assessment of his generals has been often lacking; and his direction of certain battles -- Fallujah most glaringly -- skirts catastrophe. But I rest assured that he will not countenance the greatest catastrophe of all: defeat. Whatever his flaws, the President will see the Iraq war through. We can ask no less of a leader entrusted with our nation's honor and future.
John Kerry, by contrast, is planning to abandon that nation and its people. He is planning to allow, if he must, the enemies who massacred Americans in the clear fall skies of three years past to win in Iraq. He is planning to negate and nullify and heroic sacrifices of our Marines and our allies as they crush Islamism in Najaf. He is planning to blame it on events beyond his control: the international community; the current President; the will of the Iraqi people; the realities of resources, of finances, of logistics. Why, after all, close firehouses in Brooklyn yet open them in Baghdad? Callow rhetoric to prepare for callow defeat. The conclusion is that inescapable. And it's that simple.
He's going to withdraw anyway. And the price will be paid in blood.
John Kerry didn't have the where with all to be a leader in the Senate, but now he has the ability to lead the United States of America? Where has this clod proved himself? He has a big mouth, he's a smart Alec but what has he done since Vietnam? He was a loose cannon in Vietnam who was asked to leave after his 3rd phony Purple Heart. He was a bon vivant, a womanizer and lone wolf in the Senate who worked with no one to get his legislation passed, thus got no important legislation passed.
If he feels so strongly about things how come he did jack sht in the Senate? How come he was happy to be a "back bencher" who the White House never discussed? (According to Dick Morris)
This is actually EMBARASSING to listen to. Edwards is suck a suckup. He sounds like the team mascot who thinks if he kisses enough ass he'll get to sit on the bench.
All this "fresh start" stuff is hilarious, as if history can just stop and everything will be fine if we get rid of that meanie George Bush who stopped all that nice oil for food money from going to France.
Kerry cannot be this naive. Does he think he gets in, sits at a table, and tells Chirac, "Okay, I'm new here, and I like you! A lot! So, send troops!"
I wish someone would ask him what his credentials are for such historically-persuasive diplomacy--his incredible senate negotiations, which led to such bombastic legislation as those bills naming buildings in Massachusetts?
And...what if his negotiations fail? What happens when Chirac says "We just wanted that cowboy W out, but feel good knowing we think you're OUR kind of people, Jean, good luck!"
Did anyone imagine that Kerry would "stay the course" in Iraq? Or even Afghanistan. Terrorism will be opposed with paperwork - arrest warrants and u.n. resolutions. If America is weary of the war, they will choose kerry. Debacles like Fallujah and the continuing existence of al-sadr may make enough Americans weary of Iraq for kerry to win.
I am pinging people who will appreciate this article. Thank you so much!
Kerry: Well, it has to be different from the way it is now. It is not safe today. It is not working for Iraqis. I believe it is critical to our success to have a fresh start. This President, regrettably, rushed to war, without a plan to win the peace, he pushed our allies aside, we've lost our credibility with the world, we need to restore that. And I think I can do that.
Ask yourself, what would "we" do if this were happening in America? Would martial law be instituted? Surveilence cameras? Curfews? Investigation in the background of those in the police force?
As far as not having a plan to "win the peace", we decapitated the government. There is no chance of Saddam or the Baathists (or Al Qaida) coming back to power in Iraq. The media has supported the terrorists who continue to fight. They do not wear a uniform and strike out at civilians, military, and Iraqi buildings and things like the oil industry.
They do not offer a plan to Iraqis to "chase the Westerners out". All they do is deny the inevitable. As I say, the media (Al Jazeera, arab press, Michael Moore, NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, et al) have entertained their notions that they DO have a chance at winning this war.
The "900 dead" ("Bush's fault") list is not a government accounting but the Washington Post includes it on their website. It is an antiwar tool and is prone to error (they need to boost the figures to manipulate emotions). There are people who died in Kuwait and Germany on this list (people who died from incidents that didn't even occur in Iraq, they were just deployed as "part" of the Iraq war effort). The most extreme example was a woman who died while crossing the highway in Kansas while on leave from Iraq. She does not appear on the Washington Post's list (did it ever?) but there is another person who died that same week in a forklift accident in Kuwait that is on their list. I tallied the numbers when I looked at the list on Memorial Day (and Gary Trudeau used his comic strip to publish the names). Over one third of those who died did so not from combat situations but traffic accidents, industrial accidents (like electrocution), heartattacks, pneumonia, drowning, etc. Hardly situations that could be listed as "Bush's fault" but again, the antiwar movement needs to boost the numbers because they are FAR short of the tens of thousands of dead soldiers that they warned us about (as well as the "millions" of dead Iraqis they warned us about).
The media is an accomplice to the continued instability in Iraq and John Kerry's weak legs are not helping either.
An absolutely amazing admission that Kerry's, "plan" is really just Bush's plan with a few more conferences and consultations thrown in to cover his real objective - to pull US troops out of Iraq in a year. He's gonna do what he wanted to do in Vietnam if he had had the power to do so at that time. He will leave tens of thousands of Iraqi "collaborators" to the tender mercies of the Iranian backed mullahs who will move in and take over in the ensuing chaos.
And yet, no media headlines to alert the American people to this planned betrayal.
Of course he's going to withdraw.
He implied withdrawal when he said that the first thing he'd do upon taking office was to Apologize to, well......virtually the whole world. And that includes our enemies. And isn't withdrawal what Comrade Kerry and his neo-communist cohorts of the 60's strove for as an end to the war in Nam? Yup. If he takes the office, we'll see a repeat of Viet Nam. Thugs will move into Iraq just as they did in Nam, and thousands upon thousands of people will be slaughtered. And Comrade Kerry & his cabal of neo-communists will close their minds to the slaughter so they can go on pretending that their evil ideology will bring salvation to the world.
What other leadership positions has he held? Well, we was a leader in Vietnam Veterans Against the War after he came back. He was an Assitant District Attorney for three years. He was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts for two years. What else has he done in 35 years? What has he done in 20 years in the Senate? What Senate committees has he chaired? He headed up the Iran-Contra investigation, was chairman of the Select Committe on POW/MIA affairs, and headed investigation into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International for the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Yes, quite an impressive resume to be President! /sarcasm
Lowest command? I never thought of it that way but you're dead right. Thanks. This is enough to impress the stupefied liberals in Massachusetts who voted him in many times. I used to live there and must admit I was sucked in by his Vietnam lies, braggadocio and exaggerations. I didn't vote for him but I did take his spin at face value.
"How do you achieve the stability? You need to have more people involved in the process."
And how do you evade responsability for failure. By getting as many people "involved in the process" as possible.
Thanks for listening to that NPR propaganda piece and downloading, transcribing it. Your analysis is frightening and absolutely on target. Kerry's delusional. If he becomes President, lethal events will overtake us in short order. He'll blame Bush as more and more Americans die. He'll beg terrorists and anyone else we've 'offended' to take whatever they want. What they want is a big hole in the ground from sea to shining sea, and Kerry will appease, appease until it happens.
Presumably, before we got to that point, Kerry's advisers would knock some sense into him, or we'd impeach him, but essentially, we'd be playing catch up and it would be too late. How would he apologize to millions of dead Americans and whoever's left standing?
Edwards is Kerry's lapdog and it shows. This entire interview is scarey. I can't figure out how Kerry connects what he wants to happen with reality. These 'allies' who'll send hundreds of thousands of troops to defend places where they have no interest? Why should they when through the UN, they will bully the US to do it? Goodbye sovereignty, goodbye.
That first picture is incredible. All the pictures grab you by the throat, but that first one...GW should use it somewhere. Hope he has it framed on his WH desk where he sees it every single day.
If GW had gotten a declaration of war from Congress, never mind that he'd have to go hat in hand every ninety days for more money, would that make the mass media's behavior, plus the nonsense Kerry's suggesting, treasonous? Reality ping. We're at war, declaration or not, and what they're up to is treason.
Edwards' Military Service: None.
The more I hear Kerry, the more he reminds me of Jimmy Carter. I can envision Kerry having a fireside chat talking about "American malaise". Most of America isn't being told how truly awful a Kerry Administration would be for our country, and the world in general.
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