John Kerry: Bush Chose War Over Diplomacy
Friday, June 2nd, 2006John Kerry, everyone’s favorite Vietnam veteran, is at it again in his attempt to position himself for another run at the Presidency in 2008:
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) harshly criticized the Bush administration for “disdaining diplomacy” in favor of a confrontational and unilateral foreign policy that has hurt the United States’ standing around the world and made it less safe.
In a speech Thursday in Los Angeles, the former (and perhaps future) Democratic Party presidential candidate warned that the mistakes of Iraq must not be repeated in the current standoff with Iran.
“War is the ultimate failure of diplomacy,” Kerry told a gathering of the Pacific Council on International Policy. “Yet our current leadership has arrogantly discarded this basic principle…. All too often they disdained diplomacy as little more than an inconvenient detour on the chosen path to armed conflict.”
The result, he said, was an ill-advised rush to war in Iraq that alienated other governments and diminished sympathy for the U.S. generated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. America’s current isolation, and the presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, is “playing right into Iranian hands…. The Iranians are delighted,” Kerry said.
When will this guy ever get another play book? Kerry, along with the rest of the far-left Democrats, are still offering the canard that Bush ignored the diplomatic options to start a war in Iraq. They refuse to acknowledge that the Iraqi government, under Saddam, had over twelve years to comply with the terms of the surrender from the first Gulf War, and all he did was ignore them. The U.N. had twelve years to negotiate and use diplomacy to convince Saddam to comply with the terms of the surrender, and Saddam ignored them. Finally, Saddam was issued an ultimatum, approved by the U.N., to either live up to the terms of the surrender or suffer the consequences. Again, he ignored them so now he’s paying the piper. Can someone explain to me how spending twelve years attempting to negotiate an acceptance of the terms of surrender is “disdain[ing] diplomacy as little more than an inconvenient detour on the chosen path to armed conflict”?
So, what’s Kerry answer to all of this? Same song, second chorus:
Kerry, who voted to give President Bush authorization to use force against Saddam Hussein in 2002, said he would attach an amendment to this summer’s defense appropriations bill calling for a total withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by the end of this year. But he acknowledged that the idea would be unpopular. “I know I’m not going to get the majority of my own caucus.”
Yes, he thinks that withdrawing American troops from Iraq, according to a timetable known by the public, will solve everything. Cut and run, and leave our new allies in a lurch. It’s hard to believe that this guy ever served in the military, because he doesn’t seem to know the first thing about the application of force to solve a problem. You can’t leave a problem half-solved and expect it turn out the way you want. You must finish the job. Yes, his idea is unpopular. It’s unpopular because it’s the wrong thing to do. Of course, looking back at Kerry’s life, most of the things he done have been the wrong thing to do, so it is conceivable that he has no clue.
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June 5th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Do you think we would have invaded Iraq if we knew in advance there were no WMD? No? Well, the U.N. inspectors had not been there for 12 years. They had not finished their inspection, and were basically kicked out of Iraq by the U.S. so we could stop waiting around to learn the truth and get on with the war. How is that not a massive “failure of diplomacy?”
June 6th, 2006 at 8:33 am
The UN inspectors had been in Iraq, on and off, from the end of the first Gulf War until the beginning of the Operation Iraqi Freedom. The reason the inspectors had not finished their job was because Saddam didn’t let them do their work. He failed to allow the inspectors into most of the buildings and Palaces that the inspectors wanted to look at. Given that, it was obvious that diplomacy would not work.
Diplomacy requires two sides who are willing to cooperate in order to work. With Saddam, it was always a one-sided affair failing to achieve anything. Did diplomacy fail? You bet, but it wasn’t the Bush Administration’s fault, and it wasn’t the Clinton Administration’s fault — it was Saddam’s fault. Kerry’s insinuation that the failure of diplomacy in Iraq was somehow do to the Bush Administration’s actions is false on it’s face. The plain fact is that no one was going to get Saddam to submit to the terms of the surrender agreement, and there was no point in sitting around waiting for him to submit.