Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Kerry on pre-emption: Yes, No, Maybe
Bill Hobbs, among others, has chastised John Kerry for these lines in his speech last night.
I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.
Bill quotes Hugh Hewitt and Charles Austin as saying that the Kerry Doctrine is that Kerry will wait for America to be struck before dealing with the striker. In a time when our terrorist enemies openly say they seek atomic weapons, says Hugh, the position amounts to this: "Wait to get slammed again, perhaps with tens of thousands dead this time."
As they say on As-Seen-On-TV ads, "But wait! There's more!" Kerry also said,
As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.
Here Kerry is saying (I think, but who knows?) that he will wage war pre-emptively: "to protect the American people ... from a threat that was real and imminent" (itals added), that is, not an immediately present threat. Furthermore, pre-emption of an imminent threat is a "justification for going to war," although it's the only justification.
So just what is Kerry's basic defense doctrine? Apparently it is that Kerry will make war upon those who actually attack us, as would any president, and against those who threaten us, but only if the threat is imminent.
Yet I want the candidate to answer this point:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
Kerry took pride last night in his ability to comprehend complexity ("nuance," as the commentati have put it):
Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities - and I do - because some issues just aren't all that simple.
But I can't see where Kerry understands the complexities of defense policy. Why did he verbally bifurcate his apparent doctrine of response to attack and pre-emption of imminent threat? They are heads and tails of the same coin, joined at the self-defense hip, but Kerry seems not to have made the connection.
Let's move from generalities, though, to specificities. Say, Iraq. I think George Miller got it right:
Kerry was unable to actually articulate what the "job" in Iraq is. He wants to talk about strategy while leaving the objectives nice and fuzzy.
And just what was Kerry's deep complexity on Iraq? Nothing except that he will do a better job than Bush, with not one detail how he'll do so except a promise to involve other nations. (Apparently the 19 nations standing with us in Iraq today don't count.)
And what about this line, the only line that addressed the subject:
We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation - to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.
That's it. No mention of Iran or North Korea. No hint of what he will do that Bush is not doing, what he would urge the International Atomic Energy Agency to do that it is not doing, certainly no syllable that Libya abandoned its atomic-weapons programs because of the Bush administration's actions, not a scintilla of revelation of how he will lower the nuclear tension between Pakistan and India. Nope, none of that. Just, "We need a global effort," as if the globe has been asleep at the switch since 1945.
So after hearing the keynote address of his entire campaign past or future, I don't know what John Kerry's defense doctrine or guiding philosophy are other than proclaiming every other breath, "I served in Vietnam!" Nothing Kerry said last night or any other time has enlightened me further than that.
Update: Matthew May pointedly observes,
Specifics are necessary. How would President Kerry respond to a major domestic attack? What of the growing threat in Iran? When do we go to war and when do we not? How will he reform the crisis among the intelligence agencies? How will he get the troops home from Iraq? Nobody knows what Kerry would do. "I have a plan," and "Go to johnkerry.com" is not enough. He asks us to judge him on his record, but he has been on every side of every issue.
In the end, Kerry demonstrated again that he does not realize, or cannot properly convey, that he fully realizes the severity of the situation facing the United States. ...
Yes, it's not whether Kerry can grasp complexity that really counts. It's whether he can understand the relative importance of matters that land in the Oval Office inbox. So far, I am not heartened.
by Donald Sensing, 3:19 PM
