John Kerry is a political mercenary
Hugh Hewitt poses the following question: ""What do Kerry's answers to [Thurs]day's press inquiries tell us about Kerry's worldview and character?"
Rather than try and piggy-back my symposium entry on the back of another blog post of only marginal topical similarity (like last week), I'll address this one head on, in my own inimitable fashion.
~~~~~
Q. "If you are elected, given Paul Bremer's remarks, and deteriorating conditions as you have judged them, would you be prepared to commit more troops."
KERRY: "I will do what the generals believe we need to do without having any chilling effect, as the president put in place by firing General Shinseki, and I'll have to wait until January 20th."
1) Bush is already doing what the generals believe we need to do. Just ask Tommy Franks.
2) Bush did not "fire" General Shinseki, as Kerry himself implicitly conceded by backpedaling from the claim only twenty-four hours later.
3) Nice to see that he's sufficiently magnanimous to actually wait for the inauguration he hasn't earned, as opposed to just demanding that Bush vacate the White House "pre-emptively."
KERRY: "I don't know what I am going to find on January 20th, the way the president is going. If the president just does more of the same every day, and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking."
Distilled to its essence: Kerry "doesn't know." Well, if he "doesn't know," then how can he in the same breath make any kind of evaluation of "the way the President is going"? Since when is rank ignorance the basis of credible criticism? That just makes his second sentence nothing but irresponsible, alarmist speculation without any basis in facts that he apparently doesn't want to gather, for fear that they won't support his defeatist, anti-war stance.
Also, what's that "figuratively speaking" suffix supposed to mean? That expression generally suggests that the preceding comment was metaphorical rather than literal. How could Iraq become a "figurative" Lebanon? Isn't his point that Iraq is becoming a literal Lebanon? Would that not constitute a flip-flop within a single sentence?
In any case, Lebanon is a de facto province of Syria - a likely fate of Iraq as well if Kerry's cut & run instincts were to gain access to Executive power.
KERRY: "Now, I just don't know. I can't tell you. What I'll tell you is, I have a plan."
He doesn't know, but he has a plan. A plan that is, by his own words, based upon ignorance. Isn't that precisely the grounds upon which he is criticizing Bush for going into Iraq in the first place?
KERRY: "I have laid out my plan to America..."
He's laid out twenty different facades, largely bereft of any details. Which he doesn't have because "he doesn't know." I suppose that's more candid than what he used to tell us, that we "didn't need" to know. And what details he did provide - "We'll bring our allies to the table" - have been blown out the airlock by the French and Germans giving Senator Botox a little lesson in the basics of realpolitik, which appears to include the inefficacy of recruitment of powers aiding one's enemies by the sheer force of one's own dynamic, persuasive personality that was put on glorious display in the systematic denigration of every single member of the thirty-plus member coalition President Bush did assemble.
KERRY: "... and I know that my plan has a better chance of working."
He knows nothing except that he has a plan he can't explain and that it has to be better than anything that goat-ropeing yahoo could ever come up with.
KERRY: "And in the next days I am going to say more about exactly how we are going to do what has been available to this Administration that it has chosen not to do."
Translation: I only have 26 days to come up with my twenty-first repackaging of Deania that will sell better than the previous twenty did now that everybody knows I meant France and Germany and they've stabbed me in the back before the election instead of after, as they promised me they would. Don't they know who I am?
KERRY: "But I will make certain that our troops are protected."
Translation: I will cut and run from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan, too.
KERRY: "I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, and I will make sure that we are successful, and I know exactly what I am going to do and how to do it."
Translation: I have to dispense this bluster because otherwise everybody will know I'm still the same renegade pacifist I was thirty-three years ago. But I really will get the terrorists; just not the ones in Iraq. And I really do know exactly what to do and how to do it, except that I don't know what's going on or what I'm going to find. And I really do have a plan, except that I can't tell you anything about it. So I'm going to keep mouthing the same platitudinous talking points even though they're hollower than a chocolate Easter bunny because I'm so much smarter than the rest of you that I could tell you the Moon is made of lime jello and you would all be piling into rocket ships with your bowls, spoons, cans of mixed fruit, and Cool Whip. And you'll believe them and throw out that right-wing snake-handler because you're all as dim-witted as he is.
I'm John Kerry, and you approve this message.
Q. Duelfer also said that Saddam fully intended to resume his weapons of mass destruction program because he felt that the sanctions were just going to fritter away.
KERRY: "But we wouldn't let them just fritter away. That's the point."
How? By making the Coalition of the Bribed a better offer?
KERRY: "Folks! If You've got a guy who's dangerous, you've got a guy you suspect is going to do something, you don't lift the sanctions, that's the fruits of good diplomacy. This Administration...I beg your pardon?"
This is the rhetorical equivalent of the office secretary with the really long phone cord who tends to pace a lot when she's talking.
Q. You just said [Bush] fictionalized him [Saddam] as an enemy. Now you just said he's dangerous?
KERRY: "No. What I said. I said it all the time."
Note the hesitation as he flips through his mental roladex to figure out in which lie he's gotten trapped.
KERRY: "Consistently I have said Saddam Hussein presented a threat. I voted for the authorization, because he presented a threat."
This is the tactical retreat to try and restablish his "tough guy-ness" before segueing to the next talking point.
KERRY: "There are all kinds of threats in the world, ladies and gentlemen. Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Are we invading all 60 countries?"
Gee, didn't Opie Edwards use that piece of vapidity the other night? Of course, we deposed Saddam Hussein before he could attain nuclear weapons, which ties into Kerry's alleged concern over nuclear proliferation. But doesn't he want to supply nuclear fuel to Iran? Is he confused, or are we confused from having to listen to him? And isn't that really the point?
KERRY: "35 to 40 countries had the same --more-- capability of creating weapons, nuclear weapons, at the time the president invaded Iraq than Iraq did. Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China?"
No - because they already have nuclear weapons. And not all "35 to 40 countries" are murderous, aggressive dictatorships prone to both using nuclear weapons and passing them on to transnational terrorist organizations.
Is "nuance" French for "numbskull"?
KERRY: "The point is that there are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats and I consistently laid out to the president how to deal with Saddam Hussein, who was a threat. If I'd been president, I'd have wanted the same threat of force. But as I have said a hundred times if not a thousand iin this campaign, there was a right way to use that authority and a wrong way."
There are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats - and President Bush used them all. He tried diplomacy. He went back to the UN. He got another UNSCR passed (1441). He got the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. And after Saddam was found to be in material breach, he went back for yet another SCR to specifically endorse military action. The Coalition of the Bribed balked, and only then did the Coalition of the Willing, acting on the UN's behalf, invade Iraq.
If John Kerry had been president, he'd have bowed to Turtle Bay, there'd have been no invasion, the sanctions regime would have collapsed, Saddam would have rebuilt his WMD capability, and some very nasty things would have happened.
Mr. French is a bluffer. All sizzle and no steak. All hat and no cattle. An empty Armani suit.
KERRY: "The President did it the wrong way. He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, against my warnings and other people's warnings."
Oughtn't a decorated Vietnam veteran understand the vagaries of war better than this? And does such stratospheric egomanical conceit really require much elaboration?
KERRY: "And now we have the mess we have today."
Which he doesn't "know," remember....
KERRY: "It is completely consistent that you can see him as a threat and deal with him realistically just as we saw the Soviet Union and China and others as threats and have dealt with them in other ways."
The Soviet Union did, and Red China does, possess nuclear weapons. And the Soviet Union could, and Red China can, be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. Saddam Hussein, and the "moolahs," and Kim jong-il, and Islamist terrorists, cannot. As I posed last week, if al Qaeda managed to detonate a nuke in Denver, and it was determined that Iran supplied it to them, would any American president incinerate Tehran in retaliation? And why on Earth should we wait for such a nightmare to happen instead of acting now to try and avert it?
And what's this business of citing Cold War national security doctrines when John Kerry himself was a leading foe of them? If he had had his way, the Soviet Union would still exist, and quite frankly, the United States might not, at least in its current form. And by his opposition to bunker-buster nukes, he's conclusively shown that he's still a foe of Cold War national security doctrines today.
But fear not, because he'll whip out his magic diplowand, and *poof*, everything will be okay, and we'll all live happily ever after.
At the core of his being, John Kerry is a religious leftist in the sense that his ideological worldview, intimately coupled with his personal political ambitions, is his "religion." As such, he can never admit error, as he demands that President Bush do, because his "religion" is imbued with an inherent infallability clause. In his mind he can never be wrong, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. And so he ignores that evidence and sticks with his worldview, and his own indispensibility to it.
Dictionary.com defines megalomania thusly: "A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence."
Is this beginning to sound familiar?
Perhaps most Americans thought we could afford having another such man in the Oval Office in the previous decade, since the consequences of his misactions, mistakes, and malfeasances were seemingly inimmediate and indeterminable. After 9/11, it seems inconceivable that such a complacent collective mindset could still exist.
And yet John Kerry continues to close in.
"I wonder if the Emperor Honorius, watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill, truly realized that the Roman Empire was about to fall. This is just another chapter of history. Will this be the end of our civilization? Turn the page." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "Best of Both Worlds," Star Trek: the Next Generation
Or "vote pre-emptively."
Rather than try and piggy-back my symposium entry on the back of another blog post of only marginal topical similarity (like last week), I'll address this one head on, in my own inimitable fashion.
~~~~~
Q. "If you are elected, given Paul Bremer's remarks, and deteriorating conditions as you have judged them, would you be prepared to commit more troops."
KERRY: "I will do what the generals believe we need to do without having any chilling effect, as the president put in place by firing General Shinseki, and I'll have to wait until January 20th."
1) Bush is already doing what the generals believe we need to do. Just ask Tommy Franks.
2) Bush did not "fire" General Shinseki, as Kerry himself implicitly conceded by backpedaling from the claim only twenty-four hours later.
3) Nice to see that he's sufficiently magnanimous to actually wait for the inauguration he hasn't earned, as opposed to just demanding that Bush vacate the White House "pre-emptively."
KERRY: "I don't know what I am going to find on January 20th, the way the president is going. If the president just does more of the same every day, and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking."
Distilled to its essence: Kerry "doesn't know." Well, if he "doesn't know," then how can he in the same breath make any kind of evaluation of "the way the President is going"? Since when is rank ignorance the basis of credible criticism? That just makes his second sentence nothing but irresponsible, alarmist speculation without any basis in facts that he apparently doesn't want to gather, for fear that they won't support his defeatist, anti-war stance.
Also, what's that "figuratively speaking" suffix supposed to mean? That expression generally suggests that the preceding comment was metaphorical rather than literal. How could Iraq become a "figurative" Lebanon? Isn't his point that Iraq is becoming a literal Lebanon? Would that not constitute a flip-flop within a single sentence?
In any case, Lebanon is a de facto province of Syria - a likely fate of Iraq as well if Kerry's cut & run instincts were to gain access to Executive power.
KERRY: "Now, I just don't know. I can't tell you. What I'll tell you is, I have a plan."
He doesn't know, but he has a plan. A plan that is, by his own words, based upon ignorance. Isn't that precisely the grounds upon which he is criticizing Bush for going into Iraq in the first place?
KERRY: "I have laid out my plan to America..."
He's laid out twenty different facades, largely bereft of any details. Which he doesn't have because "he doesn't know." I suppose that's more candid than what he used to tell us, that we "didn't need" to know. And what details he did provide - "We'll bring our allies to the table" - have been blown out the airlock by the French and Germans giving Senator Botox a little lesson in the basics of realpolitik, which appears to include the inefficacy of recruitment of powers aiding one's enemies by the sheer force of one's own dynamic, persuasive personality that was put on glorious display in the systematic denigration of every single member of the thirty-plus member coalition President Bush did assemble.
KERRY: "... and I know that my plan has a better chance of working."
He knows nothing except that he has a plan he can't explain and that it has to be better than anything that goat-ropeing yahoo could ever come up with.
KERRY: "And in the next days I am going to say more about exactly how we are going to do what has been available to this Administration that it has chosen not to do."
Translation: I only have 26 days to come up with my twenty-first repackaging of Deania that will sell better than the previous twenty did now that everybody knows I meant France and Germany and they've stabbed me in the back before the election instead of after, as they promised me they would. Don't they know who I am?
KERRY: "But I will make certain that our troops are protected."
Translation: I will cut and run from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan, too.
KERRY: "I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, and I will make sure that we are successful, and I know exactly what I am going to do and how to do it."
Translation: I have to dispense this bluster because otherwise everybody will know I'm still the same renegade pacifist I was thirty-three years ago. But I really will get the terrorists; just not the ones in Iraq. And I really do know exactly what to do and how to do it, except that I don't know what's going on or what I'm going to find. And I really do have a plan, except that I can't tell you anything about it. So I'm going to keep mouthing the same platitudinous talking points even though they're hollower than a chocolate Easter bunny because I'm so much smarter than the rest of you that I could tell you the Moon is made of lime jello and you would all be piling into rocket ships with your bowls, spoons, cans of mixed fruit, and Cool Whip. And you'll believe them and throw out that right-wing snake-handler because you're all as dim-witted as he is.
I'm John Kerry, and you approve this message.
Q. Duelfer also said that Saddam fully intended to resume his weapons of mass destruction program because he felt that the sanctions were just going to fritter away.
KERRY: "But we wouldn't let them just fritter away. That's the point."
How? By making the Coalition of the Bribed a better offer?
KERRY: "Folks! If You've got a guy who's dangerous, you've got a guy you suspect is going to do something, you don't lift the sanctions, that's the fruits of good diplomacy. This Administration...I beg your pardon?"
This is the rhetorical equivalent of the office secretary with the really long phone cord who tends to pace a lot when she's talking.
Q. You just said [Bush] fictionalized him [Saddam] as an enemy. Now you just said he's dangerous?
KERRY: "No. What I said. I said it all the time."
Note the hesitation as he flips through his mental roladex to figure out in which lie he's gotten trapped.
KERRY: "Consistently I have said Saddam Hussein presented a threat. I voted for the authorization, because he presented a threat."
This is the tactical retreat to try and restablish his "tough guy-ness" before segueing to the next talking point.
KERRY: "There are all kinds of threats in the world, ladies and gentlemen. Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Are we invading all 60 countries?"
Gee, didn't Opie Edwards use that piece of vapidity the other night? Of course, we deposed Saddam Hussein before he could attain nuclear weapons, which ties into Kerry's alleged concern over nuclear proliferation. But doesn't he want to supply nuclear fuel to Iran? Is he confused, or are we confused from having to listen to him? And isn't that really the point?
KERRY: "35 to 40 countries had the same --more-- capability of creating weapons, nuclear weapons, at the time the president invaded Iraq than Iraq did. Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China?"
No - because they already have nuclear weapons. And not all "35 to 40 countries" are murderous, aggressive dictatorships prone to both using nuclear weapons and passing them on to transnational terrorist organizations.
Is "nuance" French for "numbskull"?
KERRY: "The point is that there are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats and I consistently laid out to the president how to deal with Saddam Hussein, who was a threat. If I'd been president, I'd have wanted the same threat of force. But as I have said a hundred times if not a thousand iin this campaign, there was a right way to use that authority and a wrong way."
There are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats - and President Bush used them all. He tried diplomacy. He went back to the UN. He got another UNSCR passed (1441). He got the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. And after Saddam was found to be in material breach, he went back for yet another SCR to specifically endorse military action. The Coalition of the Bribed balked, and only then did the Coalition of the Willing, acting on the UN's behalf, invade Iraq.
If John Kerry had been president, he'd have bowed to Turtle Bay, there'd have been no invasion, the sanctions regime would have collapsed, Saddam would have rebuilt his WMD capability, and some very nasty things would have happened.
Mr. French is a bluffer. All sizzle and no steak. All hat and no cattle. An empty Armani suit.
KERRY: "The President did it the wrong way. He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, against my warnings and other people's warnings."
Oughtn't a decorated Vietnam veteran understand the vagaries of war better than this? And does such stratospheric egomanical conceit really require much elaboration?
KERRY: "And now we have the mess we have today."
Which he doesn't "know," remember....
KERRY: "It is completely consistent that you can see him as a threat and deal with him realistically just as we saw the Soviet Union and China and others as threats and have dealt with them in other ways."
The Soviet Union did, and Red China does, possess nuclear weapons. And the Soviet Union could, and Red China can, be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. Saddam Hussein, and the "moolahs," and Kim jong-il, and Islamist terrorists, cannot. As I posed last week, if al Qaeda managed to detonate a nuke in Denver, and it was determined that Iran supplied it to them, would any American president incinerate Tehran in retaliation? And why on Earth should we wait for such a nightmare to happen instead of acting now to try and avert it?
And what's this business of citing Cold War national security doctrines when John Kerry himself was a leading foe of them? If he had had his way, the Soviet Union would still exist, and quite frankly, the United States might not, at least in its current form. And by his opposition to bunker-buster nukes, he's conclusively shown that he's still a foe of Cold War national security doctrines today.
But fear not, because he'll whip out his magic diplowand, and *poof*, everything will be okay, and we'll all live happily ever after.
At the core of his being, John Kerry is a religious leftist in the sense that his ideological worldview, intimately coupled with his personal political ambitions, is his "religion." As such, he can never admit error, as he demands that President Bush do, because his "religion" is imbued with an inherent infallability clause. In his mind he can never be wrong, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. And so he ignores that evidence and sticks with his worldview, and his own indispensibility to it.
Dictionary.com defines megalomania thusly: "A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence."
Is this beginning to sound familiar?
Perhaps most Americans thought we could afford having another such man in the Oval Office in the previous decade, since the consequences of his misactions, mistakes, and malfeasances were seemingly inimmediate and indeterminable. After 9/11, it seems inconceivable that such a complacent collective mindset could still exist.
And yet John Kerry continues to close in.
"I wonder if the Emperor Honorius, watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill, truly realized that the Roman Empire was about to fall. This is just another chapter of history. Will this be the end of our civilization? Turn the page." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "Best of Both Worlds," Star Trek: the Next Generation
Or "vote pre-emptively."
posted by JASmius at 10:14 AM
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