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Mark Alexander- Contributor
[Courtesty of The Federalist Patriot]
Mark
Morrison Alexander is Executive Editor and Publisher of The
Federalist Patriot, the Web's "Conservative E-Journal
of Record" and now the
most widely subscribed Internet-based publication. [go
to Alexander index]
We
Will Not Waver...
Consistency is a measure…
[Mark Alexander] 10/7/04
Beginning with the first televised presidential debate between
Richard Nixon and the original JFK 44 years ago, style has often
trumped substance in presidential campaigns. Aided by a set of
questions authored by PBS's Jim Lehrer, which played directly
into the hands of John Kerry and left President George Bush playing
defense, the first presidential debate of 2004 was no exception.
While the candidates' style points were close -- much closer
than many expected -- it is substance, not style, which provides
for the national-security interests of the United States.
While taking
stage right to President Bush in last week's debate, Senator
Kerry's stand -- or stands, shall we say -- on issues
of national security placed him at far, far stage left. Style
notwithstanding, the substance of Kerry's exchange on national
security was anything but reassuring.
"My position on Iraq has been consistent." Sen. Kerry
repeated those same words some half dozen times over the course
of the 90-minute debate, so we just can't resist saying it: "Methinks
he doth protest too much." (Of some mention, Kerry referenced
his Vietnam "service" about half a dozen times, too.)
Highlighting the "consistency" of his position, over
the course of 90 minutes Kerry managed to say the war with Iraq
was a "colossal error of judgment" on the part of the
President and referred to the war as a "distraction" from "the
real war on terror," but he managed to add that he believed
Saddam was a threat when he voted to authorize the use of force,
that the Iraqi people deserved to be free, and that he could "win
the peace," while beginning to withdraw U.S. forces within
six months, making our "bribed and coerced" allies,
whose contributions he "respects," pick up the slack.
He also implied he'd build a real coalition for Iraq, including
France and Germany, and open reconstruction contracts to those
nations -- the very ones who profited most (illegally under UNSC
sanctions) from Saddam's rule, and who have both refused (as
recently as this week) to be a part of any such coalition, even
in the eventuality of a Kerry presidency. Consistent eh?
On the subject of
our troops engaged in Iraq, Kerry remarked, "I
understand what the president is talking about because I know
what it means to lose people in combat. And the question, ‘Is
it worth the cost?,' reminds me of my own thinking when I came
back from fighting in that war. And it reminds me that it is
vital for us not to confuse the war -- ever -- with the warriors.
That happened before."
More to the point,
who was the one perpetuating that confusion? Was Kerry criticizing
the war when he testified before Congress
in 1971 of war crimes by U.S. forces in Vietnam? NO! -- Kerry
was accusing U.S. troops in the field of countless atrocities,
playing directly into the hands of the Communist North. Ion Mihai
Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect
from the Soviet bloc, said of Kerry's anti-American activities
during the Vietnam War, "KGB priority number one at that
time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility.
... As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite
of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to
the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist
movements." General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's most decorated
military leader, wrote in retrospect that if not for the disunity
created by Kerry and his ilk, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered.
Kerry can't have it both ways. His undermining of U.S. resolve,
and that of our allies, in the war against terrorism, specifically
on the Iraqi warfront with Jihadistan, is a direct assault on
Americans fighting in Iraq. American and Allied Forces, and countless
Iraqis, are being injured and killed because of the political
dissent Kerry and his ilk are fomenting -- not unlike the American
casualties Kerry's 1971 protests caused in Vietnam.
Back to the war at
hand, Kerry relentlessly attacked President Bush, saying, "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin
Laden attacked us." Then, when asked about the most dangerous
security threat in the world today, Kerry didn't hesitate to
reply, "Nuclear proliferation," to which President
Bush added, "in the hands of terrorists." Though we
can -- and have -- laid bare Kerry's national-security credentials,
President Bush said it best, last night: "To say there's
only one focus in the war on terror doesn't really understand
the nature of the war on terror...the front of this war is in
more than one place."
Though he recognizes
nuclear proliferation to be the imminent threat to our nation's
security interests, Kerry seems not to
grasp -- dare we say it -- the "nuances" of dealing
with such a threat. The Senator apparently thinks he can publicly
ridicule Russian President Vladmir Putin as a tyrant one minute,
then vow to secure all fissile materiel in the former Soviet
bloc within four years the next minute. Does Kerry really believe
we can do this apart from Russian cooperation? Who's the brazen
unilateralist now?
To wit, Kerry's debate performance on these other fronts was
equally disastrous. On the subject of Iran, Kerry was obviously
confused on the whole issue of nuclear technology, as well as
the historical facts concerning the sanctions against Iran.
The man who thought
he spent Christmas in Cambodia first said we needed sanctions
against Iran, then, when confronted with
the fact that there are sanctions against Iran -- and you can't
sanction them again -- Kerry blamed the President for the "unilateral" nature
of those sanctions, to which Mr. Bush corrected, again, that
those sanctions were in place "long before I came to Washington." Indeed,
29 October 1987, for the first set of sanctions, under President
Reagan. 16 March 1995, under President Clinton, for a second
set. 19 August 1997 for another set of sanctions, again under
then President Clinton. Again, consistent?
By way of contrast, on the subject of North Korean nuclear armament,
Kerry bemoaned the President's decision to abandon bilateral
talks with dictator Kim Jung Il in favor of multilateral pressure
-- a coalition, some might say -- involving China, Russia, South
Korea and Japan. For some reason, when President Bush employs
multilateral diplomacy it's a bad idea; Kerry would return to
Clinton's tried-and-failed diplomacy of appeasement -- the same
diplomacy under which North Korea was able to advance its nuclear
program in secret, even adding enriched uranium to its plutonium-based
weapons development.
And that's just how "consistent" Kerry
can be in 90 minutes; let's not even think about four years.
Perhaps the key moment
of the debate, as well as the point most clearly delineating
just how stage left Kerry is on national
security, was his comment, "No president through all of
American history has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to
pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of
America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it
in a way that passes the test. That passes the global test [original
emphasis] where your countrymen, your people understand fully
why you're doing what you're doing. And you can prove to the
world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Mr. Bush replied, "I'm
not exactly sure what you mean: passes the 'global test.' You
take pre-emptive action if you
pass a global test? My attitude is you take pre-emptive action
in order to protect the American people."
This tells all. The
foreign-policy difference between Kerry and Bush is not multilateralism
versus unilateralism. Both are,
at times, legitimate tools of foreign policy, but not policies
themselves. The difference, rather, is one of globalism versus
national sovereignty in the promotion and defense of U.S. interests
abroad. Kerry's globalist agenda, by his own admission, would
sacrifice U.S. protection of her citizens and soldiers abroad
to the caprices of the International Criminal Court. Kerry would
seek UN approval for "preemptively" defending the United
States -- approval of the same agency that so effectively issued
no fewer than 17 resolutions against Saddam's Iraq and refused
to enforce any of them, with Kofi Annan recently declaring the
resolutions' enforcement "illegal."
With an approving
reference to Charles DeGaulle, the French president who abandoned
the U.S.-led coalition in the defense
of the free world at a crucial moment of the Cold War, Kerry
said he would restore our "credibility" with such leaders
around the world. The Patriot unapologetically replies: It's
time for these foreign leaders -- the likes of France and Germany,
who have continued unhesitatingly to obstruct U.S. interests
abroad and security around the globe -- to restore their credibility
with us.
National security is not for the faint of heart, and John Kerry's
feints of heart prove that the Senator from Massachusetts, replete
with his history of foreign policy waffling and betrayal of the
national trust, is simply not up to the task.
On the eve
of our assault on al-Qa'ida and other Jihadistan forces in
Afghanistan,
President Bush addressed the nation, and
closed with these words: "We will not waver, we will not
tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom
will prevail." Indeed! tOR
copyright
2004 Federalist Patriot
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