Oct 3rd, 2004, 11:16 PM
The Debates, Real and Predicted
by Anthony Gregory
In my most recent article, "An Honest Debate Between Bush and Kerry," I tried to go quickly through all the issues, laying out how the two candidates would speak if they were more up front about why they were saying what they were saying. From the looks of the national security "debate" last night, the two candidates read my article and drew much from it, though they changed a few words around a bit to keep from being too honest. Here are some excerpts of what they really said, and what I predicted they might.
Kerry (real): I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances. This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs.
Kerry (predicted): Do we want to recklessly go to war, without international coalitions and diplomatic tact? Or do we want a president who knows how to get the French and the Germans in on the killing? More than one thousand Americans have died in the Iraq war. I would have made sure that at least five hundred of them were foreigners instead.
Bush (real): September the 11th changed how America must look at the world. And since that day, our nation has been on a multi-pronged strategy to keep our country safer.
Bush (predicted): America was attacked on September 11, 2001, and we must not forget how we felt on that day, when we decided it was time to unite behind me. The very security of my job depends on it. In response to September the 11th, I enacted strong laws that the federal government wanted to impose but never before had an excuse to. I took us to war in the Middle East.
Kerry (Real): Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening. If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of resolution, to sit down with those leaders, say, "What do you need, what do you need now, how much more will it take to get you to join us?" we'd be in a stronger place today.
Kerry (predicted): I want to return to the old-fashioned ways of American empire, before Mr. Cowboy here ruined it all by waging war without a UN seal of approval. The UN was designed to make global hegemony more palatable to the world’s peoples. I say we use it.
Bush (Real): That's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like Al Qaida.
Bush (Predicted): I took us to war in the Middle East, invading two countries and killing thousands of people who got in the way, including terrorists. Terrorists like al Qaeda.
Kerry (Real): The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control. 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 if and when you do it, Jim, you have 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. Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations. I mean, we 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."
Kerry (Predicted): I wholeheartedly endorse Bush’s usurpation of power in the office of the presidency – I admire that office, and want it myself. But we’ve already done Iraq. Let’s go to Africa, I say! The real implication of the president’s mismanagement of Iraq is that it will be harder to conquer more countries now, especially with him in charge. We’ve lost our credibility to conquer. Elect me, and I can convince the world that American imperium is back the way it used to be in the good old days, under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.
Bush (Real): But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror. Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden. He's isolated. Seventy-five percent of his people have been brought to justice. The killer -- the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is in prison.
Bush (Predicted): And let us not forget 9/11. When you’re thinking that Iraq is a little harder than we all expected, and good Americans are gallantly giving their lives up there everyday, just remember that Saddam Hussein was a dictator, and 9/11 was the worst day in America’s history. Saddam and 9/11. Remember those two. xxxx tells me that if Americans put those two together, they’ll conclude that I’m the man to vote for.
Kerry (real): I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force.
Kerry (predicted): I think this man has done everything wrong in Iraq. He didn’t get the coalition he needed to wage the war in a more politically popular manner. He didn’t reach across the negotiation table, and reach out to other countries. He should have sought diplomatic solutions, and the reason I voted for the resolution was because it was ambiguously worded and I knew I could weasel my way out of it.
|
Linear Mode
