Kerry: Conflicted As Usual

The most immaculately constructed rationale for removing Saddam came from none other than John Kerry, the Democratic Presidential candidate.

"I would disagree with John McCain that it's the actual weapons of mass destruction he may use against us. It's what he may do in another invasion of Kuwait or in a miscalculation about the Kurds, or a miscalculation about Iran or particularly Israel. ... He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups.," Kerry said in September 2002.

The short (10 min) Kerry on Iraq documentary, a devastating compilation of Kerry's hawkish and dovish statements on Iraq, reveals a man with a unique capacity to debate, often brilliantly, both sides of an issue.

It is unlikely that Kerry is bipolar--an innocent flip-flopper. He is genuinely conflicted whether America is a force of good. In the late sixties, when he saw America as a force of good, he sent himself to Vietnam for four months where he decided America was worse than the Communists it was fighting. Upon his discharge from service, Kerry faced a choice--criticize the Communists, the Soviet Union and China for arming and supporting the mass murderers in Vietnam, or lambast Americans who went to Indochina to fight Communism (or remain silent and go on with life, as many did).

Kerry chose to call his own comrades "war criminals."

This year, Kerry had a similar choice--denounce the terrorists in Iraq for attempting to derail the march to democracy, or praise American troops for overthrowing a brutal dictatorship and supporting the democratic process. Kerry chose to call the mission a failure and declared he would not have removed Saddam.

But only a few months ago, Kerry was offering a strategy for Iraq. I noted then that most of it he hadplagiarized from the Bush team (a must read!)...all the stuff about getting the UN involved was already codified six months earlier in UN resolutions authored by the US and Britain.

Today, Kerry delivered yet another shameful, disingenious tirade against the Iraq mission that will only embolden Islamist terrorists and dishearten troops.

By describing Iraq as a failure, Kerry will undoubtedly alienate military families--who wants to hear their sons and daughters are messing it up in Iraq?

Missing, of course, is Kerry's alternative to the removal of Saddam--continue the genocidal sanctions that had already killed a million Iraqis between 1991-2003, the so-called period of peace? Most Iraqis agree--the draconian embargo was more devastating than the Iran-Iraq war.

The impact of sanctions (which were imposed on Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait) was harsher than the pain caused by the war with Iran, during which we lost the flower of our youth and the best of our men.

The thing about sanctions was that they penetrated every aspect of our lives.

The middle classes and those with limited incomes were hardest hit.

The share of pain endured by women (because of sanctions) was not less than that suffered by men.

Whatever the mistakes committed by the Bush administration in Iraq over the last year, elections, the first of its kind in an Arab country, will be held in January. Thanks to Kerry's authorization, Saddam and his sons no longer have the capacity to build WMD or launch oil-driven wars.

The Arab world can no longer claim that America, which has sacrificed a thousand of its own, is not interested in democracy in the Middle East.

Muslims can no longer complain about the aid to Israel--Americans have spent over $200 billion to liberate and rehabilitate Afghanistan and Iraq.

But for those 4 months in Vietnam, little Kerry has done before or hence demands a vote of confidence.