They blithely state,
we'd like to hear John Kerry reconcile is his stance on the latest war with Iraq and the one he took on Desert Storm in 1991.
Lucky for them, Kerry doesn't have to reconcile it as history provides the answer.
It doesn't take long before the writer starts to use fallacies to take the mind of the reader off the substance of the issue:
A total of 34 countries joined that coalition, including France and Germany. Of the 660,000 troops committed, nearly one in four came from a country other than the U.S. Of the $61 billion spent, other nations (including Germany and Japan) picked up $53 billion.
Oh! If France was willing to fight it must have been right! If we were able to gather a coalition that helped in the fight then there was no doubt it was the right thing to do at the right time.
And Kerry wanted to debate a little longer in Congress:
Still, the junior senator from Massachusetts wanted to continue debating ? not only on going to war, but also on legalistic points such as whether the president had the authority to wage war without Congress' approval.
And this was wrong why? If only they had discussed this a little more we wouldn't have young Napoleon going crazy right now.
In case the author of this editorial is reading, you ought to research a little more. I was in grade school when Desert Storm started, yet I remember a bit about the situation.
Had I been a member of the senate, I would have voted against the Gulf War. I've always fashioned myself as being one who believes in a strong national defense.
My basic reason for the war is that Kuwait was primarily the 'guilty' party and the U. S. and the world community, in general, did nothing to address the legitimate grievances that Iraq had against Kuwait. We turned a blind eye and permitted them to continue to steal Iraqi oil and violate the agreements they had made with Iraq.
The Republicans would rather resort to the use of words that tend to inflame, such as murder, looting, raping, etc. instead of looking into the legitimate reasons that the Iraqis might have had for invading Kuwait.
BTW: I'm still of the opinion that the U. S. would have taken no action if we had not had concerns about Saddam's intentions toward Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, our Republican friends will have to look elsewhere to condemn Kerry for being soft on defense. Instead of offering us stupid fallacious arguments about "He voted against the first Gulf War, thus he cannot be strong on national defense," you might try offering something substantial.
I think, more importantly, what the article fails to mention is that Kerry voted no because he thought the timing was wrong. There were legitimate things to debate before going to war. As the article does mention he wanted to talk about what war powers the President actually has. Also, there were legitimate concerns about the slant-drilling. I'm not convinced that he wouldn't have voted yes to the war if they had discussed some of the concerns in Congress.
