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John Kerry's 816-Word Concession Speech

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by Jason Roth

Before I vote Bush out of office, I decided I wanted to know exactly what John Kerry would do in Iraq if he gets elected. Here's Kerry's strategy for Iraq, so you can read it for yourself. (Originally printed in The Washington Post on Tuesday, April 13, 2004.)

I have distilled the actual "strategy" statements out of Kerry's rambling piece of garbage. Presumably Kerry's goal is to bore you to death before you've finished it, thereby letting you pass from this Earth while still holding the assumption that maybe he does have some sort of coherent strategy.

The bulk of the essay, not surprisingly, is criticism of Bush. However, here are the five, and only, specific strategy statements:

1. "If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them."

2. "The United States can bolster [U.N. representative] Brahimi's limited leverage by saying in advance that we will support any plan he proposes that gains the support of Iraqi leaders."

3. "We also need to renew our effort to attract international support in the form of boots on the ground to create a climate of security in Iraq. We need more troops and more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police."

4. "We should urge NATO to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander. This would help us obtain more troops from major powers... international acceptance of responsibility for stabilizing Iraq must be matched by international authority for managing the remainder of the Iraqi transition. The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people."

5. "The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military, preferably helped by NATO until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility."

There are 816 words in Kerry's A Strategy for Iraq. The actual strategy is discussed in 199 words. By my calculations, this means Kerry is 75.6% full of shit.

I didn't count Kerry's vague assertion that "the administration must make the United Nations a full partner" as part of his strategy because "full partner" is completely undefined. Obviously, the implication is that the U.S. should sacrifice its own interests to those of the U.N., but Kerry fails to mention which tasks the U.N. would be handling and why. This "full partner" comment amounts to your mother saying, "You should let Johnny play!" But what if Johnny is an asshole, mommy?

I also didn't count Kerry's final, so-called strategy statement that "we must level with our citizens... around a clear and credible goal" because Kerry is unspecific as to how Bush is unclear or how he, Kerry, would be clearer. This is typical political candidate hot air about how goddamn up-front and honest he'll be when he gets into office. Listen, Kerry. You're a politician. We know you're a lying motherfucker, so do us a favor and don't compound it by lying about your dishonesty. Be honest. Admit you're full of shit.

So now let's address Kerry's strategy statements.

Number one: deploying more troops. Not a completely off-the-wall statement. Sort of equivalent to "Our military commanders might not be complete fucking idiots", but not off-the-wall, nevertheless. My only question is: wasn't Kerry against the war? I'm sorry, what I mean to say is: Isn't Kerry now saying that he was against the war? And if being against the war is the retroactive stance he's deciding to take, then why would he want more troops? He must mean that it was a bad idea to deploy troops while Saddam Hussein was in power, but it's a good idea now that Hussein is gone. Mr. Kerry obviously thinks that Iraq was less threatening to the United States with Hussein running the country. Either that, or he's subscribing to the "clean up what you started" principle. This isn't completely off-the-wall either. But why? Who says we have to clean it up? How are we going to make it clean? What should we try to achieve, and how does that relate to going to war in the first place? Was the war a good idea, or not? If you want me to flick the lever next to your name in November, put something together that's comprehensible, for Christ's sake.

There's only one reason I can see that we should clean up what we started. That's to prevent an Islamic dictatorship rising up in a country that was relatively secular before we bombed the shit out of it. Unfortunately, Bush seems to be all in favor of allowing Islamic terrorists to have their fair say in the formation of the next government.

If Kerry wanted to reverse this bad policy, I'd be right behind him. But in strategy point number two, he tells us to stop being a bunch of naive daydreamers. In one sentence, John Kerry proves that he is a traitor to the United States: "The United States can bolster [U.N. representative] Brahimi's limited leverage by saying in advance that we will support any plan he proposes that gains the support of Iraqi leaders."

There could be no better example in foreign affairs of writing a blank check. Someone ought to publish this in a textbook on how to fuck up a war. Kerry's position is: we shouldn't have "rushed to war" with Iraq, but now that we have, we should do our best to make sure that we lose. Is it rocket science that no country, let alone the United States, should agree to a plan no matter what the fucking plan is? Are you kidding me? Judge Judy would rip you a new asshole if you ever told her you agreed to a contract so open-ended. But Kerry thinks that a policy which would be bad for individuals would be just dandy for an entire country.

That John Kerry would relinquish a decision so vital to American interests is abominable and sufficient reason to keep him the fuck out of the White House.

Kerry's third strategy statement is that we need to convince foreign governments to provide more troops. If he had added that those troops should be deployed under the direction of the United States, I might have agreed. But since Kerry wants to make the U.N. some sort of "full partner", presumably his call for more international troops is a method of yielding (or pretending to yield) American military authority. This goal is consistent with the Democrats' long-held belief that gaining the approval of foreign nations is a worthwhile end goal. But since more foreign support isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'll give Kerry slack on this one.

Kerry's fourth strategy statement is a garbled mix of contradictions. On one hand, he wants NATO troops "under the lead of a U.S. commander". On the other, "international acceptance of responsibility for stabilizing Iraq must be matched by international authority". And he says that the U.N. should be the "primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders". How do you like the phrase "civilian partner"? As if conceding American authority to the U.N. isn't being enough of a pussy, Kerry also trips over himself to limit the U.N.'s authority. Somebody give this guy a dress. Vietnam veteran or not. Give him a camouflaged dress for all I care.

And here's what's most amusing about Kerry's fourth statement: he wants the U.N. to work to "restore government services". Which services do you think he's referring to? The raping of women, or the torturing of children? With Syrian and Libyan help, I have no doubt that the U.N. could run these services a fuckload better than Saddam Hussein ever did.

Kerry's final strategy statement, that "the primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military", basically amounts to "let the peons in the U.S. military do the dirty work". In other words, our military will do the jumping part, and the U.N. will do the telling us how high part. International cooperation, Democrat style. Fuck this man.

John Kerry is a hypocritical pussy. In his closing paragraph, he says, "We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission". What mission? The mission you are against?

In an entire essay on "A Strategy for Iraq", Kerry fails to mention once what the mission actually is. The only way to identify what he sees as the mission is to read between the lines. Adding up all components of Kerry's "strategy", we are left with only one conclusion. Our mission in Iraq, according to Kerry, is to shut our mouths, put our heads down, step to the back of the line, get some random collection of stooges running Iraq as soon as possible, and do our damnedest to pretend nothing ever happened.

Can it be morally permissible for a candidate for president to write 816 words on how to conclude a war fought under the purported goal of fighting terrorism, and not once mention the word "terrorism"? I think not. This sort of statement requires a candidate either to declare his agreement with the premise of the war, or to explain why he disagrees and what should be done to get the country back on track to effectively end the terrorist threat. If Kerry doesn't think terrorism is important enough to discuss in this context, when would he consider it important enough?

John Kerry's foreign policy consists of keeping up appearances at international cocktail parties. Great. Then we'll be the best-dressed victims of terrorism the world has ever seen.

Like I said. Somebody give this man a dress.

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