Don’t fall off your chair. You never thought you’d hear me say this, but here goes: Yes, John Kerry is inconsistent.
But, as Jon Stewart frequently points out on “The Daily Show,” Kerry is not inconsistent with what he himself says about Iraq. It’s only inconsistent with what President Bush says he says about Iraq. Because – and here is the essence of the Bush campaign – every statement that Kerry makes, Bush immediately distorts, and then attacks him for saying something he never said in the first place.
Case in point: On the day after their first debate, Bush charged that Kerry “wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government.” For his part, the president vowed, “I will never submit America’s national security to an international test. The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France.”
Now, granted, if John Kerry really said that, he doesn’t deserve to be president. Except for one tiny fact: He didn’t. He pledged, in fact, just the opposite. In response to the first question posed by Jim Lehrer in the debate on Sept. 30, Kerry said: “I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and when we are leading strong alliances. I’ll never give a veto to any country over our security, but I also know how to lead those alliances.” And Kerry pointed out the cost of rejecting alliances: “We’re now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq, and 90 percent of the costs.”
Again, notice the complete distortion. Kerry’s actual statement: “I’ll never give a veto to any country over our security.” Bush’s charge: “He wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government.”
When challenged by reporters on this deliberate departure from the truth, Bush’s handlers defended his deception by insisting that Kerry wants every American war to first pass a “global test.” Another distortion. Again, for the record, here’s Kerry’s exact quote. In defending the right of every American president to declare preemptive war, Kerry said: “No president through all of American history has ever ceded and nor would I the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.”
But Kerry added an important caveat: “But if and when you do it, you’ve got to do it in a way that passes the test. That passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”
Now notice two things. One, that Kerry is clearly using “global test” to refer to the legitimacy of our own action, not to any worldwide veto. Two, that Kerry is absolutely correct. A president must make sure that any preemptive strike he orders is understood by the American people – and accepted by our allies as a necessary and noble action. Otherwise the people will never again trust him, and our allies will never trust us.
And that is precisely what is wrong with Bush’s war in Iraq. There is more and more evidence every day that this effort was neither necessary nor noble. The chief U.S. weapons inspector confirms that Iraq destroyed all its weapons of mass destruction in 1991. A former top CIA officer says there was no “cause for war” in all the pre-war intelligence sent to the White House. Secretary Rumsfeld now admits there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. And Ambassador Paul Bremer complains that Bush never sent in enough troops. The entire case for Iraq has fallen apart, yet Bush and Cheney still stubbornly insist we did the right thing.
Of course, Iraq is not the only case where Bush has distorted Kerry’s public statements. He accuses Kerry of wanting the government to take over health care. Kerry does not. He accuses Kerry of saying the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood. Kerry never said it. He accuses Kerry of planning to raise taxes on all Americans. Kerry’s plan is actually to shift future tax cuts from those making over $200,000 – chief beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts – to middle-class families.
George Bush’s entire campaign is based on fabrications, lies, deceptions and distortions.
But he has no choice. He can’t defend his own record.
