Kerry and McCain on ABC's This Week...

...just aired in California. Share your thoughts...here are mine:

I kept thinking of the Senate speech (thank you C-Span) where JK talked about how, during Viet Nam, those in D.C. were sending our troops to die for a strategy the leaders themselves KNEW would not accomplish the mission (paraphrase). He said then that he wasn't going to BE a United States Senator who did that to our Iraq troops (again, paraphrase).

That is what I heard him arguing today...clearly and forcefully. He spelled out the current strategy, including the surge strategy, and how strategies were DIFFERENT in the different parts of Iraq. He also argued that the best outcome...and we all want that...depends on changing the strategy and defining a CLEAR mission for our troops.

I am so impressed that he just refuses to be a senator, like some in the 1970's (and Nixon), who is willing to let this Iraq policy drift along while people are dying. We have repeated so many mistakes by losing sight of lessons that I thought we had learned as a nation after the Viet Nam war. This lesson...learned by John Kerry and taught to our nation on April 22, 1971...is one we cannot ignore.

And I thank the Senator for going on 'This Week' and teaching us, once again.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Decision2008/story?id=3570939&page=1

:patriot:

it soon.

...by Senator Kerry. It seems he just gets better and better at this. :) I'll be interested in your thoughts on it. I always enjoy your 'take' on the isuues we both care about. :hi:

...Prosense. :7

out there - promoting a sensible plan and working hard to convince people that his way makes more sense. He has gone from 13 Senators to 52 willing to say that deadlines are the best (or only) way to get the processes moving and get out. Now, even Hillary Clinton is speaking of deadlines being the only thing that motivates the Iraqis, a position she was intensely sarcastic about in 2006. That is progress - as he said they need 60 votes to pass anything - and as he has said at other times 67 votes to over ride a veto.

If you question the strength of his motivation - consider that in his Senate speech saying he would not run, he referenced the questions he asked in 1971. Other than the most famous one, the question that was toughest on the Senators listening had to have been "where are the leaders" who he accused of abandoning the troops. In many speeches, he has said that he will not be a Senator who does not work to change a policy that is wrong. In 2004, an article that I can't find, spoke of Kerry dealing with the sense that the government abandoned them by always being there for people and rescuing them. I doubt he could STOP working to resolve this if he wanted to do. (Not to mention since the beginning of this congress, he chairs the SFRC subcommittee that has oversight responsibility for Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Since he chairs the SFRC subcommittees, does he have any power over the bad decisions that are getting made? Or is he at the mercy of the "commander-in-chief"?

The power that Biden, as chair of the entire committee and Kerry, as sub-committee chair have is that they can hold hearings and they are suppose to provide advice.

Last week, Kerry held a hearing with the GAO head who spoke of their indepent report card on Iraq - let's just say it was not a report card you would have wanted to take home. The important thing about that meeting is that it got an independent assesment of progress out before the Petreas show and tell. Senator Lugar, a very respected Republican foreign policy expert was clearly shook up by the assessment, asking if Iraq evn wanted to accomplish that list of goals - a very good question.

Last month, Kerry help a hearing on Pakistan with, among other, Under secretary of state, Nicolas Burns. Since then the Pakistani press has spoken of Burns and a Kerry staffer working with Musareff on how he could give up the military role. There Kerry is working quietly, as a diplomat, trying to influence policy behind the scenes.

Bush can and may likely reject any advice from Kerry. But, the Democrats having the Senate gives them more ability in hearings etc to get the truth out. But, on foreign policy the President gets the last word - too bad that Kerry is NOT the President.

I am still depressed that we have an imposter in the WH.

I was more impressed with Kerry than anyone I have ever had the chance to vote for - and my first vote was for McGovern. Even so, having come to DU when the Kerry blog ended - I have found more reasons than I had then to respect the Senator as a truly unusal leader, who combines integrity, genuine comassion for people, eloquence and brilliance. He would have had an incredibly tough job, but he would have worked as hard as President as he did in 2005 and 2006 to change the Iraq policy and to help get Democratic majorities in the Houses of Congress.

What really hurts is that even with a Congress completely against him, he could do an enormous amount in foreign policy unilaterally - though it seemed clear from his entire career, he would have pushed to bring people together. Two things that I found recently made me more sure he would have been a great President.

One made me see how genuine his desire to help heal the wounds of Vietnam were. In 2005, this would have stretched to healing those wounds, the wounds of Iraq in this country and the wounds in the world. Here is a speech he gave when Senator Kerrey, a friend of Kerry, was using Vietnam against Clinton.

From the Senate record from 1991:
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I also rise today--and I want to say that I rise reluctantly, but I rise feeling driven by personal reasons of necessity--to express my very deep disappointment over yesterday's turn of events in the Democratic primary in Georgia.

I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this Presidential campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning.

What is ignored is the way in which our experience during that period reflected in part a positive affirmation of American values and history, not simply the more obvious negatives of loss and confusion.

What is missing is a recognition that there exists today a generation that has come into its own with powerful lessons learned, with a voice that has been grounded in experiences both of those who went to Vietnam and those who did not.

What is missing and what cries out to be said is that neither one group nor the other from that difficult period of time has cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country.

What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be refighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a Presidential primary.

The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam , not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our Nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation.

We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it. Are we

now, 20 years or 30 years later, to forget the difficulties of that time, of families that were literally torn apart, of brothers who ceased to talk to brothers, of fathers who disowned their sons, of people who felt compelled to leave the country and forget their own future and turn against the will of their own aspirations?

Are we now to descend, like latter-day Spiro Agnews, and play, as he did, to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America? Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam ?

Certainly, those who went to Vietnam suffered greatly. I have argued for years, since I returned myself in 1969, that they do deserve special affection and gratitude for service. And, indeed, I think everything I have tried to do since then has been to fight for their rights and recognition.

But while those who served are owed special recognition, that recognition should not come at the expense of others; nor does it require that others be victimized or criticized or said to have settled for a lesser standard. To divide our party or our country over this issue today, in 1992, simply does not do justice to what all of us went through during that tragic and turbulent time.

I would like to make a simple and straightforward appeal, an appeal from my heart, as well as from my head. To all those currently pursuing the Presidency in both parties, I would plead that they simply look at America. We are a nation crying out for leadership, for someone who will bring us together and raise our sights. We are a nation looking for someone who will lift our spirits and give us confidence that together we can grow out of this recession and conquer the myriad of social ills we have at home.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric. What has been said has been said, Mr. President, but I hope and pray we will put it behind us and go forward in a constructive spirit for the good of our party and the good of our country.

I thank our distinguished manager of the bill and the Senator from Delaware.



The other was an indication of how Kerry would have dealt with other countries. I have heard many Presidents speak of how to deal with others - and I have read and heard long, philosophical speeches by Kerry, but this sound bite captured from an informal MA forum this year, made me cry that he had not been elected.

Here's the link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXd66eae9K8

(The other links to sound bites from that forum were on http://www.kerryvision.net/2007/07/senator_kerry_i_dont_run_from.html
at the end of the post.

None of the 2008 candidates come close - though this is not a surprise he was my favorite by a huge measure over a voting history that is now 45 years long.

btw, I came to DU after the Kerry blog ended abruptly on that horrible day as well.

...:hi:

:)

MY President!