Which Priorities Do We Have, Anyway?

Which Priorities Do We Have, Anyway? - How many times can we repeat it - John Kerry is not a serious candidate when it comes to foreign policy. We - and by "we", I mean "the blogging right" as well as "every right-wing pundit that matters" - have been repeating this ad infinitum since the beginning of the campaign. We'll need to keep hammering on it, so that every American that can be reached on this issue, is.

Jay Reding doesn't have the first summation of Kerry's ineptitude in this area. His won't be the last, not by far. But his latest is an excellent one, and very much worth a read.

Money quote:

In essence, Kerry would have been willing to buck the international system in order to prop up a dictator but wouldn't be willing to do so to remove a tyrant who presented a clear threat to the region. Such a position is completely untenable and reflects a simpleminded opposition to Bush Administration policy rather than a coherent foreign policy.Such a position would put US troops in support of a crumbling and illegitimate regime, and ensure that the violence in Haiti would only escalate. The international community did the right thing by removing Aristide and beginning to work to ease the suffering of the Haitian people and help them restore a truly democractic system. Yet Kerry is now on the record as opposing that position in a mindlessly partisan repudiation of Bush Administration policy.

Haiti stands out as the first new, breaking foreign policy crisis since the presidential campaign got serious. Kerry's reaction to the crisis, essentially? "I'd do the opposite of whatever the President says..." - and not much else. There is no there there.

Reding sees this:

His foreign policy is a simplistic negation of the Bush Administration's policy, his positions lack coherence, and he barely mentions the most important issue of this election. The fact that Kerry very rarely mentions foreign policy on the stump, except to use it as a hammer against Bush is equally telling. John Kerry may have been a war hero in Vietnam, but he is not Commander in Chief material, and a Kerry presidency would return the US to the rudderless foreign policy of the Clinton Administration - a foreign policy that directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans at the Khobar Towers, our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the fields of Shanksburg, Pennsylvania.

I think - no, I hope and pray - that the average American this coming November realizes this simple fact: John Kerry's war heroism (let's take it at face value) is not, in and of itself, a qualification for office.

Posted by Mitch at March 9, 2004 05:00 AM