That would be John Forbes Heinz-Kerry. William Dafire thinks he is.
As the Democratic Whoopee Brigade hailed Senator Kerry’s edge in debating technique, nobody noticed his foreign policy sea change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the newest neoconservative announced doctrines more hawkish than President Bush.
First, on war-fighting in Iraq: Hard-liners criticized the Bush decision this spring not to send U.S. troops in to crush Sunni resistance in the Baathist stronghold in Falluja. Our forces wanted to fight to win but soft-liners in Washington worried about the effect of heavier civilian casualties on the hearts and minds of Iraqis, and of U.S. troop losses on Americans.
Last week in debate, John Kerry – until recently, the antiwar candidate too eager to galvanize dovish Democrats – suddenly reversed field, and came down on the side of the military hard-liners.
“What I want to do is change the dynamics on the ground,” Kerry volunteered. “And you have to do that by beginning to not back off of Falluja and other places and send the wrong message to terrorists. … You’ve got to show you’re serious.” Right on, John! Although he added his standard softener of “sharing the stakes” with “the rest of the world,” he issued his radically revised military policy: wipe out resistance in terrorist strongholds like Falluja, which requires us to inflict and accept higher casualties.
Woops. The dynamics on the ground were changed. By W and Allawi. I would guess that stronger military measures will be used in the 4 hotbeds as the Iraqi elections get closer.
Just as Kerry propounded his get-tough tactics, the first phase of the assault on centers of insurgency had begun. U.S. troops, blazing the way for recently trained Iraqi forces, have kept their appointment in Samarra. More than 200 insurgents have been killed or captured in that city in the Sunni triangle, beginning to open the area for elections.
At the same time, our aerial strikes at the safe houses of Zarqawi killers in Falluja have intensified. Kerry’s belated but welcome hawkish call to “change the dynamics on the ground” supports the joint U.S.-Iraqi seizure of control of that terrorist haven. It will be bloody, but such use of firepower in “serious” denial of sanctuary should save lives in the long run.
Kerry has been on the wrong side of every military style vote, except the authorization to go to war in Iraq this century, and that Iraq Liberation Act thing, unanimously ratified in the Senate, signed into law by Slick. Kerry has been anti Intelligenge, and even voted for a reduction in funds for the FBI.
He was on the wrong side of Reagan. Many of us, the People, were probably upset with Reagan for increasing the arms race. But, we were not US Senators, and did not necessarily know that we were trying to bankrupt the USSR. Kerry should have. Of course, with his record of attendance in the Senate, it is probably hard to understand what is going on in the Federal Government.
