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."
Yeah. And Bush only liberated 50 million people, while Kennedy liberated, er, hmmmm, actually, he sold out the Cubans, hmmmm. Does that put Kennedy into negative numbers?
Starting?
To America's inestimable good fortune.
Ted Kennedy is no Mark Spitz.
His first book: "My Oldsmobile Back on the Bridge"
You know that he had to make his play for a higher minimum wage. All that does is get people fired so that they can hire an illegal at 1/2 minimum wage!
That tired old dog just wont let go of the poisoned bone!
Uh, DarkWolf ... they did.
I was being polite, It can be a problem with me at times.
Ted Kennedy is no Foster Brooks
Yes, the Cuban situation really worked out.....it's a veritable paradise today.
Yes Bush is not busy screwing Soviet spies and Mafia whores.
Oh no-no-no, Please, there is No reason to feel ashamed at all. It is very good thing to be polite. Even when it's given to an egocentric leigslator.
:)
Teddy K is on a roll. Didn't he just pen "My Dog Splash" earlier this year?
No, Bay of Pigs was Kennedy's Vietnam, wait Vietnam was also Kennedy's Vietnam
He doesn't need to be a mirror image of JFK. He is his own man.
Well at least JFK was a hero in the South Pacific, SAVING his fellow sailors from DROWNING, which is a heck of a lot more than anyone could ever say about Chappaquiddick Ted.
I bought the movie entitled "Thirteen Days" about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's a bad movie on the whole that falsely portrays the US military brass as a bunch of war-mongers. But it does have some great sets of the inside of the White House. After watching that movie a few times, I'm not impressed by JFK's handling of the crisis. It seems to me JFK should have made the private "back channel" deal to remove our obsolete missiles from Turkey much sooner than he did. I would have made that offer about a week into that crisis instead of waiting until Soviet nuclear missiles were becoming operational.
Agreed. Also, Teddy did not write this book. He is barely capable of reading a paragraph, let alone WRITING an entire book. Ted is just fat drunk, who is propped up by a HUGE staff (who wrote the book). I wish him no ill, but he will pass into the darkness sooner or later, and then must answer for Mary Jo..
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