Arranging Deck Chairs

It seems to me Kerry has the clear support of the lunatic left, which sees any war on terror as a bad thing, unless it is aimed at Israeli terror against Palestinian terrorists. He is trying to walk the thin line to preserve that voting block while at the same time getting people who support the war on terror, and even the Iraq war, to see him as one who would more intelligently fight it. So let’s say he succeeds.

What does he do? He cuts and runs, and hopes that nothing much happens in four years. Why? Because if he wages a proactive war on terror, all those unshaven kids at DuPont Circle who solicit me to donate to Kerry every day will, along with their boyfriends, vote for Nader (or a Nader substitute) in a flash. That demographic knows it has no hope of influencing Bush, but it will with Kerry, because his re-election prospects will absolutely depend upon it. He will hold his breath for four years, securing that vote, and hope that nothing bad happens so that he can say he hasn’t weakened us. This is the only way he will avoid Michael Moore putting video of him windsurfing juxtaposed to footage of mutilated war victims in Farenheit 912.

And this is why the Kerry attempt to paint the election as one regarding the war managerial skills of Bush is a sham. If a large base of his support offers its support contingent upon Kerry doing nothing, how can he claim that he will make the same big decisions as Bush (like going into Iraq, which he supported), with the rather stretched little nuance that he will somehow do it casualty-free, or with the assistance of the corrupt French and Germans? It is rather dishonest to make the claim that the only difference between you and Bush is that you will micro-manage the military to greater effect when you know that you are beholden to a group of people that were on the brink of nominating Howard Dean.

With Dean, we would have at least gotten a much more honest debate. The election would also be over already. Anyone who votes on the basis that the war has been managed improperly is being extremely short-sighted, and betrays an astounding lack of historical knowledge. Pick a war – any war – and I guarantee you at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, students are learning the various ways in which, tactically, we screwed up. Such screw ups, which are a part of war, are now “blood on the hands” of the Commander in Chief, and such rhetoric, in addition to being irresponsible and ignorant, is counter-productive. When you raise the political costs of going to war, you lessen its likelihood, and embolden your enemies.

The false debate regards whether or not the deck chairs of the ocean liner are arranged correctly, as opposed to whether or not the ocean liner is headed straight for an iceberg. There are really only two mature views of the current debate, and Kerry is trying to straddle them – either you think that we are headed for the iceberg regardless of the arrangement of deck chairs (i.e. success or failure in Iraq), or you think that the ocean liner has been safely steered away from the iceberg but you know, as history shows, that the deck chairs will get ruffled when you make the turn. All Kerry can offer is a critique of the deck chairs. At least with Dean we’d have had an honest debate, and we’d know the two choices. But any Kerry supporter who thinks that they know what Kerry would do based upon what Kerry has said during this campaign is kidding him or herself. And if his managerial skill is to be considered paramount, consider that he has only managed two things in his life: a staff of Capital Hill sycophants, and the various maid staffs at his wife's mansions.