Posted on 04/05/2006 8:51:04 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Arguing that President Bush should have followed the strategy of diplomacy employed in the Cuban missile crisis by his brothers rather than to have launched a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein, Sen. Ted Kennedy castigated the president for his attack on Iraq.
In his new book, "America Back on Track," his first since 1982, Kennedy claimed that his two brothers' refusal to launch a pre-emptive strike on Fidel Castro when it was learned back in 1962 that there were missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States was the proper approach to the crisis. Kennedy writes that they were right when they argued that "a first strike was inconsistent with American values," and would be a "Pearl Harbor in reverse," according to the Boston Globe.
While admitting that pre-emptive war may be justified if launched to prevent "an imminent attack on our country," he claims that the Iraq war fits into a different category, which he calls "preventive war," which he condemns.
"The premeditated nature of preventive attacks and preventive wars makes them anathema to well-established international principles against aggression," Kennedy writes in the book, which the Globe reports is due to be released April 18.
Kennedy, D-Mass., argued that "Preventive war is consistent with neither our values nor our national security. It gives other nations an excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized international behavior, and the downward spiral we initiate could well engulf the whole planet."
Kennedy views Bush's decision to invade Iraq as an example of "preventive war" - of attacking a nation to prevent it from developing the ability to threaten the United States. He adds that a similar manner of thinking led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, since Japan was seeking to block the U.S. military buildup in the Pacific.
Kennedy, who the Globe notes voted against the Iraq war, remains one of its harshest critics. He charges that Bush's national security strategy is "too extreme" in its reaction to Sept. 11, 2001, because it "legitimizes a first strike, and elevates it to a core security doctrine."
"War should always be our last resort," he writess, adding that the Bush administration, however, "made preventive war an option of first resort."
His anti-war stand is nothing new. In a speech at the Brookings Institution on April 6, 2004, he claimed that Iraq was never a threat to the United States and that Bush took the country to war under false pretenses, giving al-Qaida two years to regroup and plant terrorist cells throughout the world.
"Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy said.
According to the book jacket: "With his first major policy book in more than 20 years, Senator Kennedy takes an in-depth look at our modern political landscape and offers innovative policies that he genuinely believes will guide the country effectively to the future."
The Globe describes it as "a broad indictment of the Bush administration and its policies, noting that Kennedy accuses the president of engaging in an "unprecedented level of secrecy" about government operations. He adopts the current Democrat and attacking policies that he says are harmful to the environment, the economy and the education system.
It is a primer of Kennedy's far-left policy proposals that the Globe suggests will surprise few who follow liberal politics. Among his proposals: a higher minimum wage, billions of dollars in new education spending, higher taxes on the wealthy, equal rights for gays and lesbians and a universal national healthcare program that is nothing less than socialized medicine. He insists that most of his policies will somehow "pay for themselves" by boosting the nation's productivity.
Writes Kennedy in a shocking distortion of American history: "The blunderbuss demands of the right wing that we downsize all areas of government ignore 200 years of history - 200 years of partnerships between business and government that made America the largest and most productive economy in the world."
Thanks be to God.
Was he trying to insult Dubya or to compliment him?
He's no JFK? JFK was no "JFK"!
Correct, Bush Is No JFK.
Ted, however, IS a Jack Daniels.
What took him so long to read another one?
Ted Kennedy would be an embarrasment to JFK if he were alive today. JFK had his problems, but he was a fairly conservative, pro-American Democrat, not a Socialist.
He wasn't reading it. He was coloring it in!
...vs. Afghanistan [no further explnations],
Iraq [getting better with age],
Libya [getting rid of their nuclear arms & ambitions]
& Indonesia [all the tsunami relief the US Navy brought in first-response].
I can't recall who wrote it but one of his people said Khruschev phoned Kennedy and frightened him so much that Kennedy was literally trembling with fear.
Because Al Qaeda and Saddam (Kuwait) would NEVER think of a first strike.
And in the nuclear age, we should always wait for our enemies to strike first.
Too bad when his parents had Fatso's sister lobotomized they didn't take them up on that "2 for 1" deal.
P.S. Not that anyone needs to read this, but I personally know someone who works in politics in DC, and has seen Ted Kennedy dozens of times over the past few years, and he's been drunk EVERY time. (I asked three times "EVERY time?" and he said "Yup.")
Hmmm, Teddy I hate to bring this up but what was Preemptive about Vietnam? Were the Vietnamese about to take the west coast? Now I support why we went into Vietnam and had we been allowed to truly fight it would be a powerhouse like Korea by now but I have to say Vietnam was a preventative war (See Domino Effect). You should lay off the jack buddy it is starting to effect your memory. Lets also not forget they both cut taxes across the board and sought to drastically lower capital gains taxes. Though to my knowledge bush has not been sneaking in blonde's or dealers.
C'mon, You never even served and You think you've got All the "right" answers???
You didn't even give the Chappaquiddick police a half-truthful statement.
Vietnam is JFK's Vietnam.
Italy also.
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