Thank heavens for the voters of Ohio…
Gregory Djerejian rips into John Kerry’s inane op-ed from today’s New York Times in which he gives “advice” to President Bush about what he should say in tonight’s Iraq speed.
Kerry’s statements show exactly why he has absolutely no clue about foreign policy, and why we should all be very glad he didn’t win last November:
This is typical Kerry isn’t it? Pretend you have a new idea when, in actuality, what you are proposing is actually already taking place. But dramatize the issue and, without thinking through all the consequences, make more ‘robust’ the policy recommendation so it sounds like you are offering up something new.
That is classic Kerry – a man who always struck me as someone without a clue trying to sound like a fountain of profundity. That sort of thing may have gotten him through Yale (with grades no better than Bush’s), but it doesn’t make him a particularly astute or intelligent policymaker.
Kerry’s has two primary policy recommendations, none of them advisable or well thought through. Kerry would continue the Democratic policy of signaling to the terrorists exactly when we planned to leave, ensuring that the next day they’d know to strike and utterly destroy everything we’d been working towards for the past two years. Such a policy is absolutely idiotic, and the fact that it’s become the Democratic mantra as of late proves that the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to care much at all for winning in Iraq.
You do not fight a war on a timetable. It’s a recipe for failure. Either you end up being forced to break that timetable when the excrement hits the fan (as it will), or you leave the job half-finished. Neither option is even remotely acceptable in Iraq. Any call for a timetable in Iraq is deeply irresponsible, and totally unworkable. One would think Kerry would have learned that, but given that he seems to have an uncanny ability to learn all the wrong lessons from history perhaps that’s giving him too much credit.
Kerry’s second recommendation isn’t any more considered than the first. Kerry wants to integrate the Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite Badr Brigades into the Iraqi Army. First of all, this is already happening, and secondly doing it in the way that Kerry suggests would further inflame ethnic tensions in Iraq.
We’re trying to reassure the Sunnis that we want them to have a place in the new order. So what do we do next? — Send Kurdish and Shi’ite paramilitaries into Sunni territories and let them have at it. That’s certainly going to make the Sunnis want to work with the rest of the country. If anything, such a policy would be a recipe for civil war. How would Sen. Kerry care to deal with keeping the Badr Brigades under control? How would he ensure that Moqtada al-Sadr’s thugs were filtered out before they could cause further trouble? Kerry argues that the Kurds and Shi’ites would only patrol their own areas, but the problem is coming from the smuggling routes along the Euphrates corridor stretching across the heart of Shi’a territory from the Syrian border to Baghdad. One wonders if a single consideration of the ramifications of such positions ever ended Kerry’s blow-dried Boston Brahmin brain.
Mr. Djerejian then puts it best:
Again, he doesn’t really care what the consequences are for Iraqi democratiziation–and is more preening in the New York Times pretending he has a better, more viable exit strategy than Bush. He doesn’t. Please don’t be fooled.
Kerry’s preening idiocy is on full display here. As many mistakes as Bush has made in Iraq, at least he has the fortitude to stand by the job and do what it takes to finish. Not only is John Kerry terminally clueless when it comes to issues of foreign policy, but his policies are all aimed at one objective: bug the hell out and let the Iraqis fall to terrorism. Such a plan isn’t an “exit strategy” it’s a surrender strategy. One would think that Kerry would have learned from history when our ignominious defeat in Vietnam produced a wave of human misery that left millions of people homeless or dead.
Thank God Kerry lost Ohio – it’s scary to think that had a little over 100,000 people gone the other way we would have had that vapid and pretentious twit running our foreign policy. Kerry’s inane op-ed reminds us that there but the grade of God go we all…
