Kerry's
Halfhearted Reversal
By Joshua Frank
28 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
search is finally over. Sen. John Kerry is believed to have found his
heroic voice. He apparently misplaced it back in the early '70s after
standing up to the U.S. war in Vietnam upon his saluted return from
battle. Now many antiwar liberals believe Kerry is dissenting yet again.
"I have come here today
to reaffirm that it was right to dissent in 1971 from a war that was
wrong. And to affirm that it is both a right and an obligation for Americans
today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong,
and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation."
Kerry made his proclamation
at Boston's Faneuil Hall on April 22, celebrating the 35-year anniversary
of his infamous speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Although MoveOn.org and others
have supported Kerry's appeal to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in
2006, the senator has been quite careful to qualify his remarks. He
doesn't want all U.S. troops brought home, just enough to appease the
antiwar crowd and the growing percentage of Americans who think this
war isn't going so hot. As Kerry wrote in a New York Times opinion piece
on April 5:
"If Iraq's leaders succeed
in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline:
a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end. Only
troops essential to finishing the job of training Iraqi forces should
remain."
That sure doesn't sound like
an end to the war to me: Keeping troops in Iraq until the "job"
is done or Iraqi leaders put together a "government"? More
like, occupy the poor bastards until they comply with U.S. demands.
Like that's going to happen anytime soon. What Kerry is calling for
is just more of the same: war and occupation. Nice try Sen. Kerry, but
I don't think you should be welcomed into the antiwar movement with
that kind of twisted logic.
Kerry's long been on the
teetering Iraq fence, unsure of which way to fall. He supported ousting
Saddam in the late 1990s by the use of force and voted for Bush's war
resolution giving the liar in chief the right to wallop the Iraqi menace
for whatever reason his coterie of nut jobs conjured up. He supported
Clinton's Iraq bombings and the UN's sanctions during the '90s, too.
This isn't a new thing for
Kerry the flip-flopper; he's done it his whole political life. He signed
up to kill in Vietnam and later opposed it. He signed up U.S. soldiers
to kill in Iraq, and now he says he opposes it. How can anybody trust
a senator with a record like that?
And remember, it's only the
Iraq war Kerry has a little problem with these days, not the much more
grandiose and illusive "war on terror." If anything, the senator
just wants a better, more effectively executed "war on terror,"
not an end to it.
If the fallible John Kerry
is the best the Democrats have to offer, we have a long, treacherous
road ahead of us. Not to mention many more Iraq war anniversaries, and
countless deaths.
Joshua Frank, author of Left
Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, edits BrickBurner.org.