The Empty Rifle: Kerry's War Strategy
Senator John "Hanoi" Kerry displayed the lack of direction, purpose and focus that has made him infamous in his recent Colorado press conference. Despite all of the help that the liberal press can muster, his bounce from the first debate has clearly not been enough and is waning.
More ominously, his policy alternatives are going up in smoke. First, the French and Germans clarified that no amount of Kerry rhetoric was going to change their policies. Kerry has been forced to admit that foreign governments wil not send troops to replace Americans. That being said, what will he do differently? A simple question that has never been clearly answered.
In hindsight, Kerry suggested that he would have allowed sanctions to continue. We know that the Fench, Germans, Russian and Chinese were all pushing to end sanctions. It is not clear that sanctions would have passed Kerry's "global test." This presumes that sanctions were effective or would have been indefinitely effective. Neither assumption seems warranted with the release of the CIA's survey this week. Saddam had clearly mastered doing whatever he wanted to do regardless of the sanctions. Had they remained "in place" with their corrupt administration, it is no leap of logic to assume that he could have reconstituted his WMD programs in any event. One consistent violation of sanctions was acquiring dual purpose technologies afterall.
So we are prospectively left with nothing but a "secret plan" about how he would "win" in Iraq, while presumably spending less money and using fewer U.S. forces for a shorter time. Retrospectively, we are left with Kerry's fantasy that UN sanctions would have done something to stop Saddam over the long haul. This is perhaps the most damaging item to come out of his Colorado answers and Edwards' debate responses. After all of the information is known, this is the best that John Kerry can come up with. At least Monday morning quarterbacks always win the game.
Randy Mott
More ominously, his policy alternatives are going up in smoke. First, the French and Germans clarified that no amount of Kerry rhetoric was going to change their policies. Kerry has been forced to admit that foreign governments wil not send troops to replace Americans. That being said, what will he do differently? A simple question that has never been clearly answered.
In hindsight, Kerry suggested that he would have allowed sanctions to continue. We know that the Fench, Germans, Russian and Chinese were all pushing to end sanctions. It is not clear that sanctions would have passed Kerry's "global test." This presumes that sanctions were effective or would have been indefinitely effective. Neither assumption seems warranted with the release of the CIA's survey this week. Saddam had clearly mastered doing whatever he wanted to do regardless of the sanctions. Had they remained "in place" with their corrupt administration, it is no leap of logic to assume that he could have reconstituted his WMD programs in any event. One consistent violation of sanctions was acquiring dual purpose technologies afterall.
So we are prospectively left with nothing but a "secret plan" about how he would "win" in Iraq, while presumably spending less money and using fewer U.S. forces for a shorter time. Retrospectively, we are left with Kerry's fantasy that UN sanctions would have done something to stop Saddam over the long haul. This is perhaps the most damaging item to come out of his Colorado answers and Edwards' debate responses. After all of the information is known, this is the best that John Kerry can come up with. At least Monday morning quarterbacks always win the game.
Randy Mott
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