One reason Kerry was wrong. - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

boneheaddoctor · #1 11-19-2004, 09:30 AM

Kerry's Imaginary History
Posted October 7, 2004
By Adam Yoshida

John Kerry conceives, or at least pretends to conceive, the history of U.S. foreign relations as a sort of idealized, snow-white, past of total honesty and trust.

In particular, Kerry has taken to telling one story, which I'm going to reproduce in full only because, if he believes it as he tells it, John Kerry is too naÔve to be the President of the United States.

In the first Presidential debate, Kerry said:

(W)e can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, 'Here, let me show you the photos.' And DeGaulle waved them off and said, 'No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.'

The point of the story Kerry wishes to tell is this: relations between the United States and other nations were once so good, so filled with a sort of total trust, that even a hardened leader like Charles de Gaulle was willing to simply accept the word of the President at face value.

Further, he implies, that if he's elected President we will return to those golden days. This is not only nonsense, but it's very dangerous nonsense.

It seems more logical to me to assume not that de Gaulle simply
accepted what was told to him by the United States because:

a) He already knew, from his own sources, what was told to him.

b) It suited his interests to accept what he was told uncritically.

c) Both.

Anyone who knows anything about de Gaulle should fully understand
this. The man was many things, but a starry-eyed idealist he was not. Neither was he particularly dedicated to the maintenance of good relations between France and the United States, as demonstrated by his decision three years later to withdraw France from the NATO military command and to order US troops off French soil, causing Secretary of State Dean Rusk to bitterly ask, "does that include the dead Americans in military cemeteries as well?"

In addition, even though other leaders were willing to accept
America's information about the Soviet Missiles, other leaders of the Western Alliance were hardly so accommodating. At the height of the Crisis, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker deliberately dragged his feet in putting the Canadian military on heightened alert.

Had his Defense Minister not secretly defied his orders, a critical gap could have been opened in North American defenses as a result of the truculence of one of America's so-called allies (remember: this was in the days when the Canadian military was still a functional force).

Kerry asks, "How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?" I would point out to Senator Kerry that they didn't respond to America that way then.

I'm often at a loss as to whether or not John Kerry actually believes most of the stuff he says. The foreign policies advocated by his campaign seem to have increasing wandered off into some strange world wherein Senator Kerry is a great sorcerer who, if allowed to add to his magic powers those of the Presidency, will use mystic energies to conjure up unthinkably superlative feats of excellence.

I laugh whenever Senator Kerry attempts to push his new line about President Bush "not being in touch with reality" in Afghanistan and Iraq, seeing as it seems reasonably self-evident that Kerry is simply not in touch with reality anywhere.

Even his most hardened supporters are unable to defend the fact that the Kerry-Edwards foreign policy has been created by fiat by focus groups and pollsters. Even his own supporters can't defend it, aside from spinning off into other topics, because anyone with any sense at all, regardless of their views on the actions of the Bush Administration, knows that the proposals being advanced by Senator Kerry fail the global test which, at its core, requires the policies of any nation to be grounded in reality.

In my view, Kerry has about as much credibility in saying that foreign troops and dollars are going to somehow magically come to the rescue of his foreign policy in Iraq as he would have were he to declare that his policy for Iran was premised upon receiving the assistance of the Klingon battle fleet for strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.

Kerry's looking for inspiration in a past that never existed. If he is not simply lying for political gain, then he's going to be in for one hell of a surprise if he ever gets into the Oval Office.

Adam Yoshida, who describes himself as ultra conservative, runs his own website Adamyoshida.com.