One reason for the Dems’ glee over the President’s
not-so-perfect performance in last week’s debate is that few are
paying much attention to some of the amazing nonsense that came out
of his opponent. None of us can underestimate Vichy John Kerry’s
capacity for flip-flopping. In the debate, he seemed to reverse
himself on one of the most important issues now facing America:
preemption of terrorist attacks. But if you read what he said, it’s
no flip-flop at all: Kerry still doesn’t agree that America can
preempt terrorist attacks without asking “mother, may I” of Kofi,
Jacques, and Gerhard.
Way back on December 16, 2003, in a much-ballyhooed major
foreign policy speech, Kerry said specifically that he would
abandon the policy of attacking terrorists before they have the
chance to attack us. In that speech, given at Drake University,
Kerry said, “We must change this course of unilateralism and
preemptive war that is radically wrong…” That was, at least,
consistent with what he said in April on Meet the Press,
when he reiterated — and then explained seemingly endlessly —
that the war on terror is primarily an intelligence and law
enforcement operation, not a military effort. (Don’t look for the
Drake University speech on Kerry’s campaign website. It has
suddenly disappeared, as he wishes the position he took would.)
In the debate, Kerry first declared Iraq a disaster: “And now we
see beheadings. And now we’ve got weapons of mass destruction
crossing the border every single day. And they’re blowing people
up. And we don’t have enough troops there.” Huh? WMD crossing the
border every day? Being used to blow people up? Where’s Hans Blix
now that we really need him?
Jim Lehrer tried to get a straight answer on preemptive war from
Kerry, and for his trouble he got a demonstration of Kerry’s
profound ignorance of the Cold War and a carefully parsed statement
on Kerry’s doctrine on the limitations that must be placed on
preemption: “The president always has the right and always has had
the right for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine
throughout the cold war…But if and when you do it, Jim,
you’ve got to do it in a way that passes the test. That passes the
global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully
why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you can prove to the world
that you did it for legitimate reasons.”
Thus, the Kerry Doctrine: before you strike terrorists
preemptively, you have to have sufficient evidence to convince the
world that you were right in doing it. All that gibberish proves
redundantly that Mr. Kerry — despite his repeated insistence to
the contrary — will only attack and preempt when he is confident
that he will first receive the blessing of the U.N. or Old Europe
or both. If you are going to be able to prove to the world that
what you did is legitimate, you must prove it in the way that those
whose approval you seek will accept your evidence. No one in his
right mind can believe that any proof will satisfy the U.N. or the
EUnuchs. So why does Kerry? In truth, he doesn’t. He’s not
flip-flopping. He’s just blowing blue smoke at the mirrors he’s set
up all around him.
THE GREATEST FAILURE OF Mr. Bush’s performance in the debate is
that he let Mr. Kerry off far too easily on that point. He could
have hammered Kerry into the ground with it, but managed only to
say he wasn’t sure what Kerry meant. Soon after the debate,
Republicans called Kerry on it. The Kerry campaign’s response was a
joy to behold.
According to the Washington Post, Kerry foreign policy
advisor Richard Holbrooke tried to say it ain’t so. “Asked what the
Kerry Doctrine actually is, Holbrooke, in a conference call with
reporters, replied: ‘There is no Kerry Doctrine.’” You only wish
there weren’t one, Mr. Holbrooke. But there’s no use in trying to
conceal it. Kerry won’t act to defend America against terrorist
attack without the blessing of Kofi Annan and our Euro-betters.
Conversely, he will act just as Bill Clinton did, and Jimmy Carter
always wanted to. Not to defend America. Lt. (j.g.) Kerry will undo
all the transformation of our military that has gone on in the past
four years to remake it into the peacekeeping force the U.N. wants
it to be.
The debate went, as it had to, to the question of the ongoing
genocide in the Darfur province of Sudan. In response to that
question, Kerry stated the second half of his doctrine: “But I’ll
tell you this, as president, if it took American forces to some
degree to coalesce the African Union, I’d be prepared to do it
because we could never allow another Rwanda.” Echoing what he’s
been told by his Carteresque general
staff, Kerry said, “It’s a moral responsibility for us in the
world.”
In John Kerry’s mind, there is a moral responsibility for
America to put American lives at risk whenever there may be
genocide, but we can only preempt terrorist attacks on America when
we’re sure that the world will agree with us after we’ve done it.
There is an enormous imbalance in Kerry’s thinking. In Kerry’s
mind, America apparently has more of a moral obligation to save
others than we do to save our own people. Is he serious? Of course
he is.
Mr. Kerry’s “moral responsibility” filters national security
through the clouded lens of Carterism. Carterism’s first and only
solid principle bases all else on consideration of human rights. If
we think first of human rights, we will distance ourselves from
Pakistan, Turkey, and a whole list of allies with whom we must be
joined to defeat the terrorist nations. We won’t use dirty, nasty
people for the dirty, nasty work of intelligence and covert
operations. We won’t shoot first and ask questions later. We will
get shot first, and then Kerry and however many of his staff
survive will sit around debating just who shot us. Kerry will
demand certainty in the intelligence describing terrorist threats
and attacks, and when he’s told that intelligence is not certain,
and never was, he’ll refuse to preempt or even respond.
Though he tried to, Mr. Kerry didn’t really flip-flop on
preemption. He doesn’t get it, and doesn’t want to. Preemption is
the only way we can beat the terrorists and the nations that
support them. We mustn’t be spending the lives of our troops on the
basis of some globalist “moral imperative.” John Kerry doesn’t see
that. He can’t.
Mr. Kerry is not a “9-12” candidate. The clock in his head
stopped somewhere between August 15, 1969 and April 23, 1971.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than
You Think (Regnery Publishing).
