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Kerry Deals Away his Ace in the Hole |
Current rating: 0 |
by Helen Thomas
(No verified email address) |
19 Aug 2004
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Kerry has made a colossal mistake by continuing to defend his October 2002 vote authorizing President Bush's invasion of Iraq. |
It appears American voters have little choice between the presidential candidates in the November election when it comes to the disastrous war against Iraq.
Both President Bush and his rival, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seem to think it was worth the 932 American lives (so far) and thousands of U.S. wounded to get one man behind bars -- Saddam Hussein.
There also are the untold thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded as well. But, as one Pentagon spokesman told me, "They don't count."
Kerry has made a colossal mistake by continuing to defend his October 2002 vote authorizing President Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Last week at the Grand Canyon, Kerry said he would have "voted to give the president the authority to go to war" even if he had known there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- Bush's original justification for war on Iraq.
Kerry explained that he believes a president should have the "authority" to go to war, and he voted accordingly. But he insisted that Bush subsequently misused the authority by rushing headlong into combat based on faulty intelligence about Saddam's weapons arsenal.
Kerry is mistaken on a key point. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president does not have that sole right to declare war. Despite its mindless default, that right still belongs to Congress.
Kerry has passed up several chances to distance himself from the Iraqi debacle. But instead he has left himself wide open to Bush's ridicule. What's he got left -- stem-cell research?
Bush had a field day smirking and mocking his political rival and telling the nation that he was "right" to attack Iraq, absence of weapons notwithstanding.
Bush has sarcastically told cheering Republican rallies, "After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Sen. Kerry now agrees with me."
"We did the right thing," Bush bragged. "And the world is better off for it."
The senator should have called Bush's hand months ago and laid it on the line after so much official deception. How could he say he would have voted for the 2002 war resolution after he and the whole world learned the rationale for the war was based on falsehoods?
Does Kerry realize that the U.S. invasion of Iraq without provocation violates the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg Tribunal principles?
Kerry has a weak fallback position-- that he would have planned things differently before going to war and would have lined up more European allies. Knowing what they know now about the Bush fiasco, France and Germany are congratulating themselves for having the good sense to stay out of Iraq.
So Kerry has blown it big time, rising to Bush's bait and throwing away his ace in the hole -- Bush's shaky credibility on the profound question of war and peace.
Bush has yet to apologize for misleading the nation or to explain why he needed a war when Saddam's regime was tightly contained with sanctions, weapons inspections and U.S. patrolling of the "no-fly" zone.
Bush has no exit strategy or timetable for a troop withdrawal even under the facade of Iraqi sovereignty.
Kerry has talked about drawing down American forces and an eventual pullout.
But he could learn something from two previous wartime Republican presidential candidates who had a better take on the public pulse and won the White House.
In 1952 during the Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower made a campaign promise that he would "go to Korea" and end the bloodshed. He did go to Korea and the war ended with a cease-fire standoff months after his inauguration.
In 1968, Richard Nixon said he had a "plan" to end the Vietnam War and the voters, wanting peace, bought it. Nixon -- in part forced by Congress -- reduced the U.S. troop commitment to Vietnam, but U.S. forces were still there when Nixon was forced to resign from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. But the war ended the following year.
These were not triumphal solutions but they did give Americans some hope of eventual escape from the two quagmires.
In 1964, a Los Angeles Times cartoon by famed Paul Conrad showed a pollster knocking on a door. A woman sticks her head out of a window and the pollster asks her voting preference: "President Johnson or Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.?" She replies: "Who else have you got?"
That may be the fix some Americans are in again.
©1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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The Politics of the Iraq War Authorization Vote: Rewind to Oct. 2002 |
by Andrew Rice
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Aug 2004
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The fatigue is becoming unbearable. How much longer do progressives and other rational beings who saw through the charades of the rush to war in 2002-2003 have to keep listening to John Kerry and George W. Bush pander and spin their support for an illegitimate war? Many of us knew this war was never about WMDs or Iraqi connections to Al-Qaeda, and most, if not all of the members of congress who voted for it in 2002 knew it as well.
As the brother of a 9/11 victim, I joined half a dozen other victims’ relatives Washington D.C. in late September 2002 to lobbying members of congress to vote against the war resolution. What was clear to anyone on Capitol Hill during those days is that most people knew the intelligence information was suspect and illogical, knew Saddam Hussein had no intention of ever giving our country a legitimate reason to remove him from power, and knew they were being played by Karl Rove. What is often forgotten about this sad episode in our nation’s history is that all of this was being forced onto congress a little over one month before the 2002 mid-term elections. In Oct. 2002, the members of Congress fell into 3 distinct categories.
The first group of senators and house members were the true believers in the Bush doctrine (and yes, there are Democrats who definitely fall into this category). In the post-9/11 world they had fully bought into the neoconservative, black and white view of the world and felt the only way to protect America was to “rid the world of evil” through preemption. They did not necessarily have to believe any of the WMD talk, they were willing to acting preemptively to any vague threat because they were unwilling to look at the true roots of terrorism. They were instead won over by the Bush administration notion that there are a finite number of evil people in the world that we have to go kill, before they kill us. Oh, and by the way, they want to kill us because they hate our freedom so much. John Kerry does not fit into this category.
The second group are the representatives and senators who were firmly against the war because they knew it had nothing to do with keeping America safe, and had everything to do with solidifying political advantage for Republicans in 2002 and 2004. This group consisted of Dennis Kucinich, other members of the Progressive Caucus, and liberal Senators like Ted Kennedy who had an amenable constituency at home that would never punish him at the voting booth for opposing the war. They followed their conscience and integrity, and have been shown to be on the right side of history, yet amazingly still totally not vindicated politically.
The third and least talked about group were the people who voted for the war not because they believed the ridiculous and shaky WMD claims, and talk of “imminent attacks” from Saddam Hussein, or because they believed in the “Bush Doctrine”, but rather because they either had a tremendously disinformed and terrified constituency base at home who were at risk of voting them out of office one month later, or were planning to run for President in 2004. For the latter, enter: John Kerry, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Tom Daschle. They made a political decision to protect themselves from not knowing how the war would play out politically in 2004. They gambled and lost. And even now Kerry fails to take advantage of the fact that a majority of Americans now oppose the war by saying he’d still vote “yes” given that we now know the basis for the war was completely unfounded. Of course there were a good many Americans who knew it was bunk two years ago, but that seems to still be irrelevant.
All of this is not only frustrating, but more importantly, very sad. Sad for the military families who’ve lost their loved ones to murder in Iraq and now have to confront the fact that it was mostly for politics. Sad for the memories of people like my brother David who were murdered by terrorists 3 years ago and then were used by politicians for an unnecessary and illegal war. Sad for the people of Iraq who had no say in the decision over whether they were willing to sacrifice over 10,000 of their own citizens in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And sad for our country, who now has to deal with an increase in post-war anti-American hatred and a decentralized terrorist network that can never be defeated militarily.
Believe me, I support John Kerry and his candidacy. However, it is indeed sad that he refuses to oppose this tragic war. He should do so, if not on principle, then at least because it would help him politically— because it surely would.
Andrew Rice is the director of the Red River Democracy Project (http://www.rrdp.org) in Oklahoma City. His brother David Rice was 31 years old when he was killed in the WTC on 9/11/01. |
