Kerry Outlines Foreign Policy, Attacking Bush

Kerry did the usual promise to modernize the world's most powerful military to meet the new threats as we free America from its dangerous dependence on Mideast oil, but he also said he would confront Saudi Arabia for its role in "financing and providing ideological support of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. WOW!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/politics/campaign/28KERR.html

Kerry Outlines Foreign Policy, Attacking Bush
By ROBIN TONER and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: May 28, 2004


EATTLE, May 27 — Senator John Kerry mounted a broad new attack on the Bush administration's handling of national security on Thursday by accusing the president of undermining "the legacy of generations of American leadership" with a foreign policy that has abandoned the alliance-building of the post-World War II era.

Opening a two-week critique of administration foreign policy, Mr. Kerry sought to present a clear alternative to Mr. Bush's approach to Iraq and the war on terrorism, while pursuing the same central goal: destroying Al Qaeda and its allies. "Let there be no doubt," he warned the terrorist group, "this country is united in its determination to defeat terrorism."

He said that Mr. Bush, by making military pre-emption the central doctrine of a new American foreign policy and employing it too quickly in Iraq, had ignored Theodore Roosevelt's warning that if a man "lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble."

"They looked to force before exhausting diplomacy," he said of the administration's national security team. "They bullied when they should have persuaded. They have gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst. They have made America less safe than we should be in a dangerous world."

Mr. Kerry concluded, "In short, they have undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership, and that is what we must restore, and that is what I will restore."<snip>