As much as I hate to do this, I have to defend John Kerry against Ed Morrissey’s argument that he compared US soldiers to terrorists. Here’s what Morrissey points out in Kerry’s appearance on Face The Nation:
SCHIEFFER: All right. Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay the course because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27 million Iraqis who want freedom and 10,000 terrorists. He says we’re in a watershed transformation. What about that?
Sen. KERRY: Let me–I–first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush’s policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he’s doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn’t been working. We all believe him when you say, `Stay the course.’ That’s the president’s policy, which hasn’t been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don’t agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you’ve got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You’ve got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not…
SCHIEFFER: Yeah.
Sen. KERRY: …Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.
Now, Kerry is another blow-dried double-talking politician whose utter lack of cluefulness and intellectual vacuousness are the stuff legends, but I don’t see how Kerry’s statement is equating US soldiers with terrorists. Yes, he said that having a bunch of US troops burst into your home at night would be a terrifying experience – well, duh! Of course it would be. That doesn’t mean what they’re doing is wrong or unjust or unhelpful, but if you’re an Iraqi women and a bunch of heavily-armed foreign troops enter your home searching for a terrorist, speaking a language you don’t understand, that’s going to be a frightening experience – even if those troops are doing precisely what they should be doing. At least with Iraqi troops they speak the same language and observe the same customs.
Now in typical John Kerry fashion, Kerry argues that Bush’s policy has “failed’ while offering the exact same policy restated and claiming it as his own – a technique that he used repeatedly in 2004. However, while Kerry is a preening and vapid fop whose ignorance of national security could fill volumes, arguing that he’s equating G.I. Joe with Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi here is a bit of a stretch. Yes, Kerry’s being Kerry and filling his lack of ideas with enough verbal diarrhea to fill a dump truck, but in the interests of fairness, his words don’t justify Morrissey’s conclusion.
Of course, if Kerry thinks that Democrats aren’t divided on Iraq, I’d like to see him justify the difference between the moderate wing of his party as represented by Senators Lieberman, Clinton, and former Gov. Warner and the radical “withdraw now” wing of the party as represented by Reps. Pelosi and Murtha. Then again, Kerry’s always been able to keep contradictory arguments in his head simultaneously like that – after all, he voted for the war before he voted against it…
The Republicans are divided on Iraq too. Chuck Hagel is to the left of many Democrats in his position on the war. And he voted along three-quarters of Senate Republicans to demand that Bush provide a coherent exit strategy last month. Give me a time in American history where any political party (particularly the coalition Democratic Party) has marched in lockstep unison on a given issue. The Democrats are more ideologically united now than they’ve been in many decades. There is simply no historical precedent for the Democratic Party to take the GOP bait and become a party of mindlessly unified rubber stamps. With only two political parties, such a scenario is not possible, nor is it beneficial. We need MORE, not fewer viewpoints offered on Iraqi exit strategies. It would be a disgrace if everyone with a (D) next to their name raced to stand behind either John Murtha’s position or Joe Lieberman’s. And even though the Republicans are ridiculing the Dems for not an unflinchingly unified caucus regarding Iraq, the same Republicans would be the first to cry foul if every single Democrat did embrace a single position.
As the owl says: “O RLY?” Here’s Hagel’s latest statement on Iraq:
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha are calling for a unilateral withdrawal at once.
Sure they are… but only if you ignore the polling data and the fact that Pelosi and Murtha are advocating a position diametrically opposite of the Democratic “moderates” like Clinton and Warner.
If the entire Democratic Party stood up in one voice and said that they would not support a withdrawal from Iraq until Iraq can stand on it’s own, I’d be praising them to no end for it. Too bad the hard left has control of the party, making such a statement of principle unlikely at best.
You know, George Orwell defined “intelligence” as “the ability to keep in mind two contradictory ideas simultaneously.” So where, again, does that leave you vs. Kerry?
Chuck Hagel has been undermining the Bush war policy every opportunity he gets. As the number of former generals advising a timeline for withdrawal continues to increase (and as approval of the war continues to fall), I suspect Hagel will have the political cover he needs to move towards Kerry’s position.
“Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha are calling for a unilateral withdrawal at once.”
No they’re not. They’re calling for troops to be redeployed to the periphery of the combat zone in the next six months. I don’t agree with them, but it’s a serious position worthy of being heard and evaluated. I say, keep ’em coming….not STFU to Democrats (or Republicans) with exit strategies.
When I talked about Democrats being more ideologically united now than they’ve been in decades, it wasn’t meant to say we are in fact united, just less disjointed than in the past. With Zell Miller out of the Senate, there is no longer the level of ideological disparity as there was in the days of “Scoop” Jackson vs. George McGovern, George Wallace vs. Hubert Humphrey or even Paul Wellstone vs. Sam Nunn. The Democrats have always been a diverse coalition party and lockstep allegiance to a common script is no less prominent today than it ever was. Nonetheless, it’s effective baiting for the GOP to suggest that the Democrats can only win by nationalizing “unifying themes,” which if produced, would be used by Republicans as grounds to denunciate red-state Democrats for being Ted Kennedy stooges.
“If the entire Democratic Party stood up in one voice and said that they would not support a withdrawal from Iraq until Iraq can stand on it’s own, I’d be praising them to no end for it. ”
No, you’d be calling them Republican-lite and suggesting they’re pale imitations of Dubya driven by fear of voter backlash. I don’t recall of love for Democrats coming from you back in 2002 when the majority of Congressional Democrats voted for the war. When they got splattered three weeks later in midterm elections, you fired back with the same old drivel of a clueless disjointed party twisting in the wind.
“Too bad the hard left has control of the party, making such a statement of principle unlikely at best.”
Only in America 2005 could the goalposts of “hard left” have been moved so far that Harry Reid and John Murtha would qualify.
“idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,” Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.”