Say what you want about John Kerry, but if you don’t like his stance on Iraq, don’t worry as he’ll have another one in a few days…
Kerry’s clearly unable to formulate a coherent position on Iraq, and considering it’s one of the largest issues in this campaign, that’s simply unacceptable. The problem being that Kerry can’t have a strong position on Iraq. The Howard Dean wing of the party thinks that getting rid of Hussein was a violation of international law, imperialism, etc. He can’t afford to piss them off by supporting the war strongly. On the other hand, he’s desperately overcompensating the other way to avoid looking like a wimp (in efforts as transparent and pathetic as a middle-aged man driving a brand new Corvette). In the end he’s trying to have his war and hate it too, and it’s not working.
We went through eight years of wishy-washy foreign policy, and it resulted in a series of increasingly ambitious terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda, including 9/11. Not only that, but Kerry’s domestic policies aren’t even as sound as Clinton. For all his faults, Clinton did sign welfare reform, NAFTA, and lead in the formation of the WTO. Kerry’s instincts for paleo-protectionism would be an economic disaster for this country as he tries to “keep jobs in the US” – resulting in thousands of people losing their jobs as crushing regulations and an increasing tax burden force companies to shed employees.
Kerry’s Hamlet-like indecision is bad enough – but when one considers the areas he does have some level of conviction, it’s even worse. If Kerry would be as atrocious as President as he is as a candidate, the Democrats might consider if they’d be better off hoping he’d lose, else he’s likely to take their party down with him.
To some extent, Kerry’s position on Iraq is unacceptable, but the flip side is that being foolishly stubborn and proclaiming to know exactly how to solve any problem is even more harmful. Be it George Bush, yourself or Another Thought, you refuse to accept that you don’t have the precise blueprint to solving any problem at any juncture. And farbeit from the disastrous results of your hubris to make you admit you miscalculated. That appears to be the biggest logistical difference between Democrats and Republicans these days. Democrats realize that nuance exists in the world. Republicans refuse to accept than any solution is acceptable other than the one-dimensional solutions they constantly propose. What I don’t understand is that if people like you and Another Thought have all the answers and decry what horrible people politicians are, why don’t you turn off your computers, get off your asses and head to Washington to help enact all these rock-solid, can’t-fail solutions to the world’s problems you force upon the rest of us daily?
Nuance implies actually having a position. Kerry doesn’t even make it that far. “Nuance” is not a synonym for indecision, fecklessness, and opportunism.
Being unable to decide if a war is right or not isn’t nuance any more than P⋅~P is nuance.
President Bush has toppled two dangerous and tyrannical regimes. He’s taken two countries that are rife with factionalism and managed to give them the best shot at democracy and stability that they have ever had.
Have mistakes been made? Of course. Fallujah should never have been allowed to become a terrorist stronghold. But I’ve yet to see anything coming from John Feckless Kerry that indicates that he has anything other than kneejerk opposition to Bush. He suggests that we should realign our troop commitments one day – the next week Bush does it. Kerry then opposes the very same plan. It’s idiocy.
Kerry is an empty suit. His talk of “repairing alliances” with countries that have every reason of self interest in seeing us fail is hopelessly naive. His economic policies are the kind of paleo-protectionism that even Clinton rejected. His foreign policy is rudderless.
If you call that “nuance” then nuance isn’t a quality that a President should have.