Before the debate, I should probably get off my chest my main crankiness about this campaign season, which is the extent to which Our Only President and his cronies have gotten away with pretending that John Kerry has changed his position on Iraq several times. As far as I can tell, Senator Kerry hasn’t changed his position at all, although that position requires a good deal of explanation, and he has explained it differently to different audiences, as well he should, and he has often explained it badly, as he shouldn’t.\n
Before the invasion, his position was that the Ba’athist regime in Iraq posed a threat to the US, and that therefore it was OK to invade them. However, to set the US up for the best chance at the best situation afterwards, it would be wise to (a) negotiate the timing with allies, and (b) pay for the thing up front. I should qualify even that, of course: when it came to the infamous Senate Resolution, he clearly felt that the administration could use it to diplomatic advantage, and that a vote for it was only indirectly a vote to invade. In other words, John Kerry supported keeping open the option to invade, while continuing to negotiate<\/I>. The negotiations failed, due either to incompetence or indifference on the part of the US, which can’t be blamed on John Kerry.\n
The infamous $87 billion isn’t even as complicated as that: having stated his preference for paying for the thing up front, he supported that version and opposed the deficit version. I don’t believe he was involved in any of the negotiation on either bill. He simply voted for one version and against the other. There is no change of heart, here, only a Senatorial procedure that isn’t very far from play-acting, particularly as it was clear which version would win long before the vote.\n
As for the other stuff, Senator Kerry has for some time been clearly supporting a diminished US troop presence in Iraq, UN and EU involvement in security, more rebuilding, and a sharper focus on other theaters in the so-called War on Terror. The specifics, none of which I have bothered to familiarize myself with, may well have changed. He has been making statements on the topic, as Senator and Candidate, for more a year now, during which time the situation hasn’t been exactly stable. Further, I have no idea what of his plans he has any chance of implementing as president, as the situation will not be exactly stable for the next year, and it’s hard for me to believe that France, Germany, Brazil or China will happily replace a hundred thousand of our troops. But still, I haven’t seen any convincing examples of Senator Kerry changing his position.\n
Look, I think it’s a bad position. It’s not a persuasive one, that’s for sure. I think that the Senate not only was wrong to pass that resolution, but fell down in its Constitutional duty to decide whether the country should go to war or not. But on the main questions: whether, when and under what circumstances the invasion was justified, how it would be supported, what the reconstruction should look like and how that would be paid for, and the basic priorities of force, negotiation, persuasion, rebuilding, alliances, and budget, he has had the same position for two years, now. To pretend otherwise is, well, a lie.\n
\n
Oh, some Gentle Readers of long standing may well remember that my own position at the time the Senate was discussing the resolution was very close to the one Senator Kerry held: invasion was justified if negotiations failed, and the threat of invasion had to be left open to Our Only President as a tool of those negotiations. Yes, that was my position. It was wrong. Our Only President was not able to (or willing to) carry on good-faith negotiations, either with the Ba’athists or with our putative allies, and we should have recognized that before giving him the tool (or the big desk). Were I currently a candidate for President, I would, I hope, admit to having been wrong, and having changed my position since then: flip-flopped, in fact. But here’s the thing—I ain’t qualified for the job. My error on this matter is nothing compared to the mistakes I would make if it were my teacup on the big desk.\n
,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before the debate, I should probably get off my chest my main crankiness about this campaign season, which is the extent to which Our Only President and his cronies have gotten away with pretending that John Kerry has changed his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17135,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/17135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}