Is Kerry the man?
By the Editor
It looks as if the name Kerry is one that's going to be worth remembering. For John Forbes Kerry is now very much the Democratic Party frontrunner to take on George W Bush in the November presidential election in the United States.
Our interest in this man is twofold: first, he may well be America's next leader; and, second, this newspaper does not accept Bush's warmongering as a solution to the world's problems. We also believe that there is something fundamentally dishonest about the current incumbent of the White House.
Whether Kerry becomes the challenger is obviously up to his party. But it would seem there is a ground swell that says he has the ability to defeat Bush.
Significantly, Kerry has impeccable credentials when it comes to fighting for his country. He is a much-decorated Vietnam war hero, although he became an outspoken critic of that conflict.
Even more significantly, he believes Bush has got it all wrong over Iraq. Kerry has gone on record as saying: "I think this (Bush) administration has run the most reckless, arrogant, inept and ideological foreign policy in modern history."
Perhaps the difference between him and
Bush is the fact that the American president
never did any fighting himself. There is, in fact, much controversy over how he ducked and
dived while doing duty at home with the National Guard.
The warrior president, in other words, has no experience of the fate to which he is so glibly assigning others - also his own people. For him it's like a video game; a mixture of Star Wars and Superman.
That is exactly the problem. And it also explains why it has taken Bush so long to admit that he was wrong in claiming that he had absolutely no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But even if he was right on that score, surely he should have realised that thousands of people were going to be killed?
It must be hoped that a true hero will emerge, and it could just be that Wisconsin's defining primary next Tuesday could emphatically point to Kerry.
Published on the web by the Star on February 13, 2004.
thestar.co.za |
