Kerry Fails The Test

Kerry Fails The Test


New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman issued a challenge, almost a plea, to John Kerry last Sunday. And it was a test that John Kerry failed miserably the very next day.
Thomas Friedman is a specialist on Middle East matters. He writes with a fairness and sensitivity that earns him respect and access to both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although Jewish, Thomas Friedman possesses an instinctive understanding of Arab culture that permits him to serve as a translator, making their concerns comprehensible to Americans.
So every serious observer of the Middle East makes it a point to read and digest Friedman?s columns. His most recent column was written, not just to help readers such as myself grasp how precarious our current position in Iraq is, but especially to make John Kerry understand how the land lies.
The terrorists in Iraq who have been blowing up their fellow Arabs by the score, along with an occasional American, know very well that they cannot defeat us through direct confrontation. The recently intercepted communication from Al Quaida Zarquawi conveys the hopelessness of the terrorists? position.
Unable to actually beat us, the terrorists? goal is now to break our national will, much as the Vietnam War broke our will 30 years ago. And there is an opportunity for them to achieve just that this coming November. The terrorists have to be taking a great deal of hope from the possibility that John Kerry might replace George Bush. John Kerry did vote to deny the military the funding it required to remain in Iraq and finish the job there. The possibility that a less resolute president could be taking office in January certainly provides the terrorists with a considerable morale boost.
Thomas Friedman therefore wrote a speech that he wishes John Kerry would give, so that the terrorists could derive no optimism from the upcoming election. Friedman pleaded with Kerry to tell the terrorists that a change of administrations would bring them no relief. He asked that Kerry tell the Baathist dead-enders in Iraq that a Kerry victory will not mean that America will hand the Iraqi people back to those tyrants.
Friedman asked that Kerry not give aid or comfort to the enemy through his political rhetoric.
The very next day, at a debate in Wisconsin, Kerry was asked, ?Senator Kerry, President Bush a week ago on "Meet the Press " described himself as a war president. He said he's got war on his mind as he considers these policies and decisions he has to make. If you were elected, would you see yourself as a war president?
John Kerry answered: ?I'd see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an environmental president. And add them all together, you can't be safe at home today unless you are also safe abroad.?
Translation: John Kerry is not much interested in prosecuting the war and will devote his attention to issues that frankly, presidents can?t do much about. Terrorists will once again be left in peace to plan their next attack on the United States. The fascists can claim Iraq as their staging area once again. America?s reputation as a reliable ally to friends of democracy will be shredded.
John Kerry makes it a point to bring up Vietnam at every opportunity. Democrats and their press poodles enjoy calling Iraq a ?quagmire? much as Vietnam became. And that comparison is fair, insofar as it applies to John Kerry. In his 1985 memoir, General Giap, who commanded the North Vietnamese army to victory over an irresolute United States, credited John Kerry?s antiwar group, ?Vietnam Veterans Against the War,? with handing the communists a victory they never could have won by force of arms. According to General Giap, had it not been for John Kerry, the communists probably would have had to surrender.
A generation later, John Kerry is in position again to deal America a humiliating defeat. John Kerry is in a unique position from which he may encourage or discourage America?s enemies. The dead enders who are killing Americans and Iraqis are undoubtedly encouraged by the fact that they only have to hold out until November to win. John Kerry could have disabused them of that notion and demoralized them. Instead, he chose to demoralize America and her allies.