Yago: As a senator, you had to go on record with your opinions about the war. Do
you feel you got duped?
Kerry: No, I think that I said very clearly, if you read my speech, and I invite [everyone] to go to JohnKerry.com, pull down my speech and read what I said on the floor of the Senate. In the debate I said very clearly I disagree with the preemptive doctrine. I disagree with the notion that you go to war just because Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. I said that the weapons of mass destruction are the only legitimate issue, and that basically war is the last resort, ultimate enforcement [tool for inspections]. Now that's what I said. George Bush assured us that was his approach.
And you know, you are not duped when somebody misleads you and in effect lies to you or doesn't tell you the truth. The president, I think, misled the whole country in effect. And the evidence that we saw--we were given photographs, direct evidence--was not real. I mean, it just turned out not to be, not to pan out, so I think the vote was a correct one based on the evidence that everybody was given. The president's actions thereafter were not correct, because he clearly evidenced just a rush to try to want to go to war, and that is not the arrangement that he made with the country, in my judgment.
Kerry's two points that caught my eye are that (1) The only legitimate reason to go to war with Iraq was weapons of mass destruction. This means he doesn't think conventional threats, violation of other UN resolutions, or even the most heinous repression is a good reason. If there turned out to be no evidence of a WMD threat (a separate question), then Kerry thinks we owe it to Saddam to reinstall him in power in Iraq.(2) Kerry wants to say that Bush duped everybody, but he doesn't want to admit he was duped himself. As is typical of Kerry in his voting record, he wants to have it both ways, and refuses to admit the contradiction or to make tradeoffs. Not the man you want making hard decisions for you on anything--- on Iraq, social security, or even spending on pencils in the White House.
And then there is Kerry's grand strategy for dealing with terrorism:
Yago: Since September 11 there has been this specter of another terror
attack looming over all of our daily lives. Is there going to be a time when it's OK for
all of us not to be afraid? Kerry: That is a great question. That's our goal, that is what would restore
life as we knew it in America, is to find a time when we won't be fearful. And I will do
everything in my power to get us to that place. I have a different vision of how you get
there from George Bush, and I think it is going to take quite a while to get
there, because there are people in other countries who have been raised to hate. And
they don't have a future, they don't have jobs, they don't have any kind of
enfranchisement, voting rights, or the capacity to change things, so the
[Wahhabi] fundamentalists, the madras schools, and the other institutions set up to sort
of harness that energy and channel it into a very evil place is real. And it is
going to be around until we have a foreign policy and other countries have a foreign
policy that begins to really deal with the problems on this planet. One of those
problems is abject poverty and lack of education and repression in countries. And
I think our policy needs to help open the doors, if you will, over a period of time, so
that people can channel that energy into their own lives, into their own country, and
into achieving things within a framework that is civilized. It's a long struggle, and terror has been around for a long time. It is going to be a
great challenge for us. I have a very different view of how we do it from George Bush.
George Bush just thinks you flex your military muscle; I don't. I think you have to
build relationships. I think you have to invest, I think you have to work with other
countries, I think you need a lot of public diplomacy. And we need as much energy
committed to the war of ideas as we do to the war on the battlefield, and that is a real
difference between us in this effort. But our goal is clearly to be free from that fear.
Franklin Roosevelt talked about it. It's almost a natural right, if you will, of being
American, and it's something we need to achieve again.
Kerry's answer is actually pretty clear in this case: Americans are going to have to
live in fear of terrorism until the entire world is as democratic and as rich as
America. Kerry's would give up on trying to deter terrorism, or to make the world
democratic and rich by military pressure (e.g., it was wrong to try to forcibly
democratize Iraq or Afghanistan). What he *would* do is a bit unclear, but it sounds
like either (a) nothing, or (b) give trillions of dollars in foreign economic aid.
And he would put a lot of energy into "the war of ideas". It doesn't sound like that's the kind of war he should be volunteering for.
[in full at 04.04.02b.htm ]
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