[John Kerry]
"As Congress debated Iraq last year, Kerry became one of the Senate's
most articulate critics of President Bush's rush to war. In commentary
published in The New York Times in September 2002, he wrote: "Until we
have properly laid the groundwork and proved to our fellow citizens and
our allies that we really have no other choice, we are not yet at the
moment of unilateral decision-making in going to war against Iraq."
But just a month later - with nothing in the president's approach to Iraq
having changed - he gave Bush that unilateral authority.
Over the course of the last year, Kerry has occasionally claimed that
Bush misled him and his fellow senators, but that answer makes Kerry
sound gullible - not the sort of man you'd trust to protect the country
against the likes of Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-il. (The president did
engage in dissembling and distortion to win support for his war, but Kerry
was in a position to know that.)
The truth is more likely this: Kerry caved in to what he believed to be his
political interests. Last year, many Democratic strategists were advising
their congressional candidates to vote for the war. Kerry, whose most
transparent flaw has always been calculated ambition, probably believed
that his presidential aspirations would be better served by a "yes" vote on
the resolution.
The irony, of course, is that the opposite turned out to be true: With
young Americans dying daily in Iraq, the public has a more jaundiced
view of the invasion than it did several months ago. Kerry lost the bet.
And that may be just what he deserves. There are some issues that are
simply too important to be put through the calculus of political
odds-making, and a vote to send the nation to war is certainly one of
them. As distasteful as it is to watch Republicans bash gay marriage to
placate fundamentalist Christians, or to watch Democrats demagogue on
Medicare to win over seniors, neither of those issues has the significance
of a vote to go to war.
The consideration of invading a sovereign nation - and putting young
Americans in harm's way to do it - ought to be the sort of issue in which a
man or woman votes his or her conscience, regardless of the political
ramifications. If John Kerry failed to do that, he doesn't deserve the
presidency."
Article: How John Kerry gambled and lost
By Cynthia Tucker
ATLANTA CONSTITUTION
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. She can be reached by e-mail: cynthia@ajc.com.
From: tallahassee.com |
