I beg indulgence. I don't usually do diaries mulling over one news story or news point, and I try not to go into mindless Kerry-bashing, even if he wasn't my favorite primary candidate. I also apologize if this was mulled at length earlier--I didn't have much of a chance to check things out recently.
However, I can't quite wrap my mind about this one. Did Kerry say that even knowing everything we know now about Iraq, he would still have voted for authorization for the war? This is the story from the Times.
I remember listening to an interview on NPR about a month or so ago with Jay Rockefeller and I believe Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) where the interviewer asked both point blank if they would vote as they did (both voted for the war) knowing what they know now. Rockefeller said he would not (and said that he had already publicly stated that) and Shelby hedged a little, saying that it would be difficult to know, because matters were complicated. In other words, he didn't come out and say that he would have voted for the war.
True, Richard Shelby isn't running for president, but if Richard Shelby can say he's not sure (albeit on NPR), I think a huge public opinion worm has turned. According to some polls, the majority of Americans wouldn't have wanted to go into Iraq, knowing what we know now. So why would Kerry take a position that before long is going to be occupied just by just him, Bush, Cheney and the neocons?
Granted, he went into a long "nuanced" explanation of how Bush should have had a better plan to win the peace, but I just don't get this, either politically (going into Iraq no longer a political winner) or as a matter of policy (if Kerry actually believes that invading Iraq at that time was a good idea, I don't want him as commander in chief either). Is he trying to evade the flip-flop charge?
Let me mention that I'm far from a pacifist. I am probably more on the "warlike" side of the spectrum for people on this site. However, I also prefer when policies make sense, and the Iraq war never made sense unless you were one of Dick Cheney's oil buddies or something.
I'm able to put up with quite a bit of malarkey in the name of "that's just politics" or "that's how you win elections" and I have a fair amount of confidence that Kerry as president would enact the sort of Democratic policies and programs I can live with--but someone explain to me how this was a good thing? And does Kerry actually believe after all the water under the bridge that invading Iraq was the right thing to do?
