As I have said before, not only is it unfair to call John Francois “Scary” Kerry a “flip-flopper,” it does not begin to explain the real problem with him as a president in the age of Islamic terrorism. The real problem is precisely the opposite. He is not a flip-flopper. Throughout his senate career, he has been consistently on the wrong side of every important national security issue affecting the United States. No wonder that his ‘speech of a lifetime,’ accepting the democrat nomination focused on irrelevant foolishness like riding his bike into the East Berlin and getting grounded. (Granted, not as lame as that story his daughter told about his giving CPR to a hamster. There’s a credential that inspires confidence, but I digress.) Perhaps he hoped that that charming childhood story would help us forget that when Ronald Reagan was fighting the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War, Kerry called for cancellation of at least 27 weapon systems and proposed massive defense cuts. He opposed the MX missile, B-1 bomber and a missile defense system, or that he naively supported that inane nuclear freeze.
So he extols the virtues of freedom in the West and contrasts it with the depotism of the Soviet system, yet if he had had his way, the Kremlin would still be operating all around the world, and exporting totalitarianism to satellites around the world. Not that that troubled John Kerry either. He opposed assistance to the freedom-fighting Nicaraguan contras, and sucked up to commie glamour boy aka Castro, Jr., Daniel Ortega. Remember that embarrassing episode in April, 1985, when he and his crypto-socialist fellow democrat Sen. Tom Harkin did their Neville Chamberlain impression? They decided that foreign policy was too important to be left to the executive branch as the Founding Fathers had ordained, so they decided it was time for a road trip to Managua for a meeting with their “dear commandante.” The trip occurred just days before a vote on $14 million appropriation for the contras. The Reagan administration had a deal on a table: limiting aid to the Nicaraguan resistance to humanitarian aid, if the Soviet-backed, Marxist-Leninist Sandanistas would agree to free elections. Harkin and Kerry returned with a meaningless “peace in our time” document that was effectively a contra surrender with nothing in exchange from the enemy. I should say the enemies of freedom, the Reagan administration and those who opposed Soviet expansionism. I’m not sure that Senators Harkin and Kerry saw it that way. No wait—I am sure. They didn’t. They were on the other side. You know, the Soviet side.
One thing Dumb and Dumber hadn’t counted on, but any six year old probably could have told them, is that you can’t trust communists. It turned out that just as they were proudly announcing the terrific job they had done negotiating with Ortega for the security of our hemisphere, the commie darling of the American Left, was on his way to Moscow to ask his Soviet masters for $200 million more in aid.
When he got back from Managua, Kerry delivered a nauseating speech on the floor of the Senate, that concluded "My generation, and a lot of us grew up with the phrase 'Give peace a chance,' a part of a song that captured a lot of people's imagination [sic]. I hope that the president of the United States will give peace a chance." I am not making this up.
Let’s not forget what Senator Kerry saw when he looked at Nicaragua. “Look at it,” the Washington Post reported that he said as his plane touched down there. “It reminds me so much of Vietnam.” Hey, what doesn’t? His morning cup of coffee, his dirty socks on the floor and Teresa’s Gulfstream jet remind him of Vietnam. His shrink reports that when he identified every inkblot as reminding him of Vietnam, and the doctor suggested he was a tad obsessed, Kerry replied “But you’re the one with all the pictures of Vietnam.” OK, I made that up, but you get the idea. John Kerry viewed Ronald Reagan’s view of Nicaragua as the same sort ‘mistake’ as Vietnam. But just who was mistaken?
Let’s recall also what Secretary of State George Schultz said in response to Senator Kerry’s plea that the Reagan Administration not overeact to the Soviets’ attempt to set up another fiefdom in our hemisphere. “Those who assure us that these dire consequences are not in prospect [in Central America] are some of those who assured us of the same in Indochina before 1975. The litany of apology for communists and condemnation for America and our friends, is beginning again.” Indeed. Recall that John Kerry told the Senate in 1971 that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, “2000-3000” might face recrimination. In reality, tens of thousands of Vietnamese were summarily executed and over a million were forced into concentration, or as those Kerry and his anti-war buds enabled would say “re-education,” camps.
He was wrong then, and he’s wrong now on the Soviet’s successor in threatening America, Islamic terrorism. He has characterized the war on terror as “a great big manhunt,” indicating that he still believes that fighting terrorism is about law enforcement and intelligence and not war. When you consider that “[I]f you look at the people around Kerry, what you see is the Clinton national security team” (defense analyst Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute quoted in the Chicago Tribune, 7/22/04), that’s no surprise.
If you want to really get scared, consider this quote from the Houston Chronicle (7/31/04):
“Kerry, whose convention speech emphasized national security and foreign policy, said in an interview the Associated Press that he would put Osama bin Laden on trial in U.S. courts.
That would ensure the “fastest, surest route” to a murder conviction if the terrorist mastermind is captured while he is president, Kerry said.
“I want him tried for murder in New York City, and in Virginia and in Pennsylvania,” where planes hijacked by al-Qaida operatives crashed Sept. 11, 2001, he said.”
OK, let’s add this up: a man who has been consistently wrong about national security and threats to world peace and American freedom who surrounds himself with foreign policy advisers from the previous administration whose failures in the war on terror were horrifically and vividly apparent as smoldering towers, and murdered innocents, who chooses as his running mate a trial lawyer with zero experience in international affairs and who wants a replay of the O.J. trial for Osama bin Laden. And his mentor Ted Kennedy says the only thing we have to fear is four more years with President Bush in office? I don’t think so, September 10th boy. Not if John Kerry becomes commander-in-chief.