Posted on 06/02/2006 9:06:05 AM PDT by slowhand520
Kerry Attacks Bush Over Iraq Policies The administration's choice of confrontation instead of diplomacy has harmed the U.S., the senator says in a speech in Los Angeles.
By Ashraf Khalil, Times Staff Writer June 2, 2006
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) harshly criticized the Bush administration for "disdaining diplomacy" in favor of a confrontational and unilateral foreign policy that has hurt the United States' standing around the world and made it less safe.
In a speech Thursday in Los Angeles, the former (and perhaps future) Democratic Party presidential candidate warned that the mistakes of Iraq must not be repeated in the current standoff with Iran.
"War is the ultimate failure of diplomacy," Kerry told a gathering of the Pacific Council on International Policy. "Yet our current leadership has arrogantly discarded this basic principle…. All too often they disdained diplomacy as little more than an inconvenient detour on the chosen path to armed conflict."
The result, he said, was an ill-advised rush to war in Iraq that alienated other governments and diminished sympathy for the U.S. generated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. America's current isolation, and the presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, is "playing right into Iranian hands…. The Iranians are delighted," Kerry said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
War is the natural conclusion to the complete failure of diplomacy.
War is what has to happen when the diplomats fail.
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