I listened to Kerry spew out his new soundbites against the 'arrogance' and 'bad choices' of GWBush today on NPR. Yike. This guy is really bad. Again, no plan.
Here's the line of questioning a reporter with balls should ask Candidate Kerry, should he or she get a chance:
How good is Kerry's grasp of the geopolitical reasons that the dissenting Europeans fail to send troops to Iraq? His current responses hang it all on the 'arrogance' of the President. The logical conclusion of this, and key to Kerry's argument, is that a changing of the guard will restore 'credibility' to US foreign policy.
But let's get down to specifics. The rebellion in Iraq has made the place unsafe for elections, which disables the provisional government's validity. This is really the nut of any argument about things going bad in Iraq. The question is whether or not this is the same nut for the dissenting Euros + Russia. (Let's agree to call them the Weasels, OK?)
If the problem with 'Bush's War' is that it was too unilateral then what is the Weasel interest in keeping troops away now? Do they not support Allawi? Or is it simply too dangerous for them to commit troops? There doesn't seem to be any wiggle room when you say the occupation is going poorly because of the rebellion, because on one hand either the rebellion can be crushed with more troops or it can be diplomatically supressed with more supplication. Why would the Europeans choose to do anything in support of Allawi (or against him) only after the US election? The answer is that they wouldn't. The Weasels are withholding support from the alliance because they are betting against what Bush started, plain and simple. They are either incapable or unwilling to make the situation in Iraq any better than it is. It makes absolutely no sense that this attitude would suddenly change based upon the US presidential race. Unless you believe that the Weasels' logic is identical to that presented by Candidate Kerry. I do not.
The second line of questioning goes something like this:
Kerry suggests that Bush made the wrong choices because he was beholden to the ideologues. He's halfway right. However Kerry refuses to talk about what he would do, other than 'restore credibility' to make the situation on the ground in Iraq any better.
So is Senator Kerry getting his strategic view of Iraq from Fox News? If not, then whom? We know who the PNAC is and what they are all about. We understand their ideas and why they said 'go' on Iraq. We have no idea where Kerry's braintrust lives or what it thinks. Remember what Dumbledore said about that.
Here, Candidate Kerry is doing a Clarence Thomas. He is suggesting that he is eminently qualified to occupy the highest office in the land, but is not giving any clues as to his strategic position on critical issues he will inevitably handle. Kerry refuses to answer hypotheticals on Iraq. All he says is that GWBush was wrong, wrong, wrong.
This is shady.
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