Sunday, August 15, 2004
Why Kerry Said "Yes"
There's been a lot of back and forth lately about Kerry's response to the question about his Iraq vote. I, myself, have spent some time trying to figure out what to make of it. However, I think that a couple of articles really make a much stronger case than the Kerry campaign has managed so far.
First is an article from Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo:
Next is an article from Ickabod over at Right Side Down:
Both articles are well worth the time and they do a good job of summing up what the Democratic talking heads SHOULD be saying.
First is an article from Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo:
- Sometimes in baseball a batter decides to take a pitch. He's decided in advance that he's not going to swing no matter what comes down the pike. But in most cases, when a batter steps up to the plate, he doesn't decide whether he's going to swing until he sees the pitch. Only an idiot decides in advance not knowing what he's going to face. And yet this is roughly what the Bush camp says was the only reasonable, or I suppose manly, approach to the Iraq war.
I see the war decision in very similar terms to this baseball analogy. Voting for the war resolution was not remotely the same thing as going to war at the first possible opportunity.
Forcing inspections meant seeing what inspections would yield. And seeing what inspections would yield was the best insurance against getting ourselves into the current situation and finding that the WMD, which constituted the premise for the whole endeavor, didn't even exist.
To extend our baseball analogy, Bush went to the plate knowing he was going to swing at whatever pitch he got.
Next is an article from Ickabod over at Right Side Down:
- On the vote itself: Knowing what we know now, relative to Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill both saying the administration had it in for a war with Iraq come hell or high water, the administration put forth the resolution to authorize force at a time when we had no choice but to vote for it. Let's not forget, the resolution was based on the authorization of force if we didn't get what we wanted through inspections. So a vote against it would have wholly undercut the inspections we were arguing for even before they were to begin. Hence, we had to vote for it in order to give the inspections some teeth. So Bush knew he had a 100% chance of getting approval to fight his war by putting this resolution out there before the inspections rather than during or after, or even not at all. In other words, he played politics with a war vote. He forced us into a position where we either had to vote against giving the inspections some teeth, or vote for a war. Smart politics on his part, but politics nonetheless. So would i vote for it again under the same circumstances? Sure, i'd have to just like i had to then. But that sort of vote, those sorts of games shouldn't be played to get what you want when we're talking about sending men and women to their death.
Both articles are well worth the time and they do a good job of summing up what the Democratic talking heads SHOULD be saying.
