The Ugly American (John Kerry)

RealClearPolitics ^ | Februrary 1, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

[RWR8189]

Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate for president, is at it again with another rude gaffe, this one providing an unintended glimpse of the way many contemporary cosmopolitan elites characterize their homeland when abroad.

In the past, Kerry has said that our soldiers were "terrorizing" Iraqi civilians in their homes. He has also warned that uneducated Americans "get stuck in Iraq" -- a supposedly botched joke. Now, he assures an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the United States is a "sort of international pariah."

Kerry, who appeared on stage in Davos this past weekend with former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, also proclaimed, "When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy."

Kerry could learn a few simple rules of etiquette that should guide the "message" of all high American officials when abroad:

Tell the Whole Truth Without Posturing or Spinning

Kerry was clearly directing his criticism at the Bush administration, but the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty, was first rejected by the U.S. in 1997. Ten years ago, President Clinton wisely chose not to refer the treaty to the Senate. Even that was not enough for outraged senators, who went ahead anyway to vote 95-0 to oppose any international agreement on climate control like Kyoto in which China, India and other developing countries would remain exempt. Kerry himself cast one of these votes -- an ironic example of what Kerry now calls "duplicity and hypocrisy."

[potlatch]

Ha! Maybe so.

[OESY]

Kerry playing to his base

I know it's tiresome, but sometimes we must contemplate John Kerry. Now that he's recognized that there is no possible way he could ever get the Democratic nomination in 2008, he's free to travel the world and let us know what he really thinks. And what he thinks displays the lies that he tells himself and now the world. He was criticizing the United States under Bush for not signing on to the Kyoto Treaty and not doing enough to fight AIDS. What he was forgetting was that he was one of the 95 senators who voted 95 to 0 in a 1997 resolution to tell President Clinton not to even think of sending the Senate an environmental treaty that called for huge costs to the American economy while exempting countries like China and India and other developing countries from its protocols. And he forgets that President Bush has been spending triple what President Clinton spent to fight AIDS in Africa and other countries. These facts are inconvenient because they interfere with the whole storyline that George W. Bush is responsible for everything bad that anyone around the world thinks of the United States.

* * *

Kerry doesn't seem to be bothered at all by how his words will be perceived by his fellow citizens. In Massachusetts they might not mind that he travels abroad and misleads about his own country. And his audience in Davos was probably suitably impressed with the wisdom Kerry showed by hanging with Khatami and bashing Bush. After all, that crowd there is Kerry's true base of support.

Source: http://haloscan.com/tb/betsynewmark/117034225079131769

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[foreshadowed at waco]

I'll never forget when Kerry was running in 2003--he kept calling Vietnam Nixon's war--and I decided then and there that he was still the same dirtbag Kerry who denounced his own comrades--what a weasel...thank God he's not running...I'd be so ashamed if someone like him won the Presidency...he has no honor.