Stephen Den Beste has an excellent examination of John Kerry's TIME interview HERE. While I wholeheartedly concur with most of his treatise (especially about the whole "global consent" thang), I want to chime in about one or two points.
From denbeste.nu:
TIME: Obviously it's good that Saddam is out of power. Was bringing him down worth the cost?
KERRY: If there are no weapons of mass destruction— and we may yet find some—then this is a war that was fought on false pretenses, because that was the justification to the American people, to the Congress, to the world, and that was clearly the frame of my vote of consent. I said it as clearly as you can in my speech. I suggested that all the evils of Saddam Hussein alone were not a cause to go to war.denbeste: Man, the anti-war leftist buzzword count in all that is nearly off scale. You got your "rush to war", your "last resort", "scorn of the world", the "flawed intelligence"...
TIME: So, if we don't find WMD, the war wasn't worth the costs? That's a yes?
KERRY: No, I think you can still—wait, no. You can't—that's not a fair question, and I'll tell you why. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn't mean [transforming Iraq] was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go. You have to have that distinction.denbeste: It is like hell not a fair question. It is the key question, because WMDs were never the primary reason for the invasion. "Transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics" was always the primary reason for going in.
denbeste: Kerry says, "if we had kept on inspecting properly and gone through the process appropriately, we might have avoided almost a $200 billion expenditure, the loss of lives and the scorn of the world and the breaking of so many relationships." But we would also have lost that opportunity to "change the dynamics".
Kerry seems excessively concerned with "legitimacy" and "alliances".
Kerry is all over the map in this interview. At moments he seems to be saying that the action was perfectly legitimate, but, only if the U.N. or NATO had carried it out. But, of course, Kerry voted to authorize the "unilateral" action.
At other times he seems to be championing the Nixon Doctrine; that the U.S. would send it's troops to fight only when American interests are directly threatened. (This was a direct result of Richard Nixon's assessment of the failure of the Vietnam debacle.)
But, Kerry, later in the interview, wants to defend his record on supporting military action by pointing out his vote to intervene in Kosovo. Bill Clinton actually boasted that the mission in Kosovo was so selfless because there was no national interest at stake; it was purely humanitarian mission.
And, in the above quote, Kerry seems only concerned with the "procedure"; that everything would have been honky dory if only we'd waited for the U.N. inspectors to prove the negative that Iraq had no WMD anywhere before we moved in "unilaterally." That, of course, would never have removed Saddam -- a tyrant more murderous and sadistic than Melosovic who Kerry voted to smack down.
Judging by my reading of John Kerry's TIME interview, Stephen Den Beste's conclusions about him seems dead on: that he seems equivocating and carefully choosing his words to offend the least amount of witnesses; that he's less of a philosopher than an opportunist; and that the one thing he knows for sure above all else is that he wants to be the next President of the United States..
Thanks to Hold The Mayo for pointing out the post at USS Clueless. I really gotta remember to lookover my toolbelt more often!
Posted by Tuning Spork at March 8, 2004 09:27 PM