John Kerry seems to have become the Democratic “canidate”:http://www.dailykos.com/section/DemPrimary for president. Anyone who could make this speech back in ’71 has my vote:
bq.. …We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel, because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
…We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
…We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We’re here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war.
>> “Democracy Now: John Kerry Then: Hear Kerry’s Historic 1971 Testimony Against the Vietnam War”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/20/1535232
p. If you change Vietnam to Iraq, and the names of the officials to Rumsfield and co. then this speech could have been written for today’s war. At the most a para needs to be deleted.
Anyways, Kerry made his political career from that speech. It brought him into the limelight and gave him his entry into politics. Then he turned right around and voted in Oct 2002 for war in Iraq. I know that politics kills brain cells, along with most other humane qualities in a person, but this seems extreme. George Bush was dumb to start off with, so he’s an exception, but Kerry seems to have really degenrated from the bright young man he used to be. Of course even a talking sock would be better then Bush getting re-elected, it’s just that Kerry seems to be “more of the same”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2096408.
bq. It is not that a Kerry administration would change any fundamental aspect of contemporary American policy, but rather that those policies would be pursued with a little more discretion and finesse, if it is possible to talk about discretion and war in the same breath.
>> “Chris Sanders of Sanders Research Associates”:http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=535#_ednref5
Seems like more of the same. So what if Kerry fixes the environment in the US? Thats not really going to affect the rest of the world very much. Most likely he’ll enact some sort of feel-good environmental act which will continue to do more of the same slightly slower. No radical clean energy bills here to see.
bq. Liberals often are willing to concede the lack of noticeable differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues such as foreign policy and economics.
>> “PressAction: John Kerry and the Power of Discretion”:http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001331.html
There’s not much else left! At least the speeches should be better… and the liberal press converage for that matter. After all, “the New York Times has endorsed Kerry”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/opinion/26THU1.html?ex=1393131600&en=b8cf369b80dd12c2&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND and that should mean something…