Not Your Sweetie

Clark or Kerry? War or peace? Story score: · Add to my Hotlist
By Robbedvoter [Add to my Buddy List]
Posted to Robbedvoter's weblog (Soapbox) on Sun Jan 25th, 2004 at 06:50:08 AM EST


I won't go here in the perplexing reasons that made Kerry oppose the Gulf war but approve the second Iraq war - predicated on the same reasons as the first. Others have done it and will continue.
     

What worries me is the preemption doctrine no one asks him about. It woried Clark enough to speak to Congress against it in September 2002 http://www.videos4clark.com/vidclips/15.wmv and address his fellow candidates in the first debate:

Clark:And just to pick up on what John Kerry said, this administration's preemptive doctrine is causing North Korea and Iran to accelerate their nuclear weapons development.

Now, there are some of us who aren't in Washington right now. But I'd like to ask all those who are -- let's see some leadership in the United States Congress. Let's see you take apart that doctrine of preemption now. I don't think we can wait until November of 2004 to change the administration on this threat. We're marching into another military campaign in the Middle East. We need to stop it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A5841-2003Oct9& ; ;notFound=true

This is how Clark explains it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3983123/ But Clark, the West Point debate team captain, insists on responding to those attacks by teaching something of a college short-course on the difference between "pre -emptive" and "preventative" war. On the campaign bus, he tried it again and landed on a slightly better definition of why Bush's war was a preventative war and why it was dangerous. He urged common sense by evoking the Vietnam-era talk of destroying a village in order to save it. "The whole idea that we should have a war now so we don't have to fight one later has always struck a lot of people as really bad," he said. "It's a case of logic overriding common sense."

Kerry however, had a speech after last year yellow cake SOTU in which he said: "Even having botched the diplomacy, it is the duty of any president, in the final analysis, to defend this nation and dispel the security threats, both immediate and longer term against it. Saddam Hussein has brought military action upon himself by refusing for 12 years to comply with the mandates of the United Nations." http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5722

Any president - this is as good as a promise that president Kerry will follow Bush's romp through the world
.

And, to follow his words with action, Kerry sponsored the Syria accountability act. He writes a constituent:

"I cosponsored the Syria Accountability Act to hold Syria responsible for its support for terrorism, occupation of Lebanon, and possible pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.  http://jasonfromwaltham.forclark.com/story/2004/1/22/1801/68576

So, the choice really is between someone who pledged not to take us into war unless it is ABSOLUTELY the last resort and someone who not only cheered the present policy but initiated the next war by cosponsoring legislation.

War or peace?