Kerry: Wrong on the war, Wrong on the Constitution, Wrong on the Politics

John Kerry’s nuanced position on the war and his vote to give the president the authority to go war—aside from being wrong on the merits--is clearly not working.  I had a longish talk with one of Kerry’s top foreign policy advisers earlier this summer at a party and he explained to me that the campaign’s polling supported the position.  The country was not anti-war; rather it was the anti-the way the war had been sold and was being conducted.

I thought that behind-the-times then and I think it even more so now.  Well more than a majority of the country thinks the war a mistake and a near majority believes Bush misled them on purpose.  But just as important, Kerry’s position is pretty close to inexplicable, impossible to understand, and worst of all, contributes to Republican (and Nader/Republican) attacks that this is a man who cannot take a consistent position and stick to it.  (It is also wrong on the merits.  Kerry says he would have voted the same way today because he thinks a president “should have that authority.”  But the Constitution specifically gives Congress the authority to make war.  Congress gives it to the president only when war is considered to be necessary.  Clearly in the case of Iraq, that wasn’t the case.  They had no significant weapons, no ties to terrorists and no nuclear program. The war was sold on the backs of lies. So why override clear Constitutional strictures against the abuse of presidential power?)

Anyway, you want a clear consistent position.  Here’s one:
1. President Bush misled the country and the Congress into war and has conducted it incompetently.

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/ Alterman

COMMENTARY:
America's Pathetic Liberals: The Sequel
Featuring Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11"
by John Chuckman

http://baltimorechronicle.com/071904JohnChuckman.shtml


(Cut)

I have a problem with all the liberal whining in America over professional soldiers being killed in Iraq, actually still a small number compared to the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed both in the war and in the decade-long run-up of brutally harsh American-imposed restrictions, and it is no different for Moore's scene of a mother's tears. No, I'm not talking about the poor mother herself whose loss is real, but about the calculation of Moore's film in using the scene and about the very predictable result on American audiences. Pictures of a small number of flag-draped coffins appear to be almost the only thing fueling America's limp antiwar movement.

When I see pleas about dead American soldiers I can't help but think of all the tears shed at the Vietnam memorial for the relatively few who died helping in the work of bringing overwhelming destruction to another land, but there is never a tear shed for the millions of souls extinguished by America.

There is a scene in a much more moving documentary from the Vietnam War called "Hearts and Minds," in which a poor Vietnamese man bawls and screams over the limp limbs of his dead young child, one of countless innocents snuffed out by Americans flying too high ever to glimpse the horror they delivered. The film then cut to an interview with General Westmoreland sitting comfortably, pontificating about the way Asians didn't regard life the same way Americans do. Propaganda, yes, but still shatteringly true and unforgettable.

Well, it was a fine film of its type, but it wasn't destined to make its director a wealthy man. Americans just are not much interested in the suffering of others, especially it seems when they cause it. Although, in mitigation, it is fair to point out how little of the suffering they ever are permitted to see, the lack of imagination over what must happen when you drop thousands of tons of high explosives and flesh-ripping shrapnel is still appalling.

But even if you do not feel the same way I do, and you were moved by the mother's tears in the last part of the movie, be very careful how you vote to get rid of Bush. Kerry has never so much as condemned the war. He has never condemned Bush, except by repeating official-report findings all thinking people on the planet understood a year before the official report. Kerry's view of the Middle East, frantic pandering to Israel's darkest interests, promises no end to future troubles. He is an unrepentant, unimaginative supporter of global empire.

That brings us to the real tragedy of America and the real cause of 9/11 and so many other horrors: America's swaggering readiness to play the game of global empire with all the brutality and incivility that it implies. You tell me how a confused film like Moore's, even if it contributes to toppling a confused President like Bush, adds anything to resolving America's great dilemma of insatiable greed and willingness to do terrible deeds while mouthing high-sounding ideals.





_________________
"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint.
When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist."
Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist