And immediately after that, Kerry gave a couple anecdotes describing the consequences of passing, or not passing a “global test”:
We passed the test with friggin de Gaulle during the Cuban missile crisis. de Gaulle did not like us, but he knew our word was good. Now we’ve made up stuff, and the world knows that our word is not good. We failed the test.
Whether we want them to or not, the world will test our words against reality, and when we fail that test, our interests will suffer.
And small is just how Bush should be feeling after making such an ass of himself on Thursday night.
Kerry supporter here, and I also think Kerry meant “global” in the sense of international.
We (the US, that is, as represented by the current administration) put the sum total of our credibility on the line when we sent Colin Powell to the UN to stink up their chambers with the biggest pile of bullshit anyone has seen in a long time. The only thing that separates the choice of Iraq from a random drawing from a hat would be the fact that the country most definitely did NOT have WMDs, and that any number of sub-troglodytes in this country were still pissed that the 91 Gulf War had not been “finished” by overthrowing Hussein.
We then declared that, in light of said bullshit, we were taking over the duties of enforcement of UN resolutions, got one or two of our bigger allies to lend a troop or two, and gathered together every two-bit nation who has more or less no choice but to smile and nod along with the lunatic with the nukes, and called it the “Coalition of the Willing”.
We then proceeded to essentially bomb back to the stone age an important oil-supplying nation, and appeared rather pathetically surprised, when, as has happened with the fall of, oh, every single fucking dictatorship of the last 100 years, the removal of Hussein’s power simply gave free reign to the numerous mutually antagonistic groups in the country rather than bring peace.
Aha, says the rest of the world. I’m sure now that Bush has been chagrined by this little adventure, he’ll see what he needs to do to set it right. Considering that his idea of gearing up for war consisted of giving large sums of money to rich people who spend it on imported goods, he’ll be looking for low bids on the necessary reconstruction efforts. We can help there, and maybe offset the costs of the fact that he just cut off a chunk of our energy supply.
But no! The contracts all went to the Vice President’s company, who proceeded to bend the government over and do unspeakable things to its wallet.
We have now:
[ol]
[li]killed a thousand of our own soldiers and ten times that many Iraqis;[/li][li]added yet another area of incredible destabilization to the Middle East;[/li][li]increased the vigor of anti-Western terrorists, who have treated the World Wide Web to a continuous stream of new multinational episodes of “Who Wants To Be A Headless Corpse?”[/li][li]made it very clear to any rogue nation that was even THINKING about developing, buying or stealing nukes that they better hurry up and do so, since they’d rather be North Korea right now than Iraq[/li][li]made sure we are spread too thin to deal quickly with the growing threats in North Korea, not to mention whatever’s brewing in Iran, effectively making that the rest of the world’s problem[/li][li]disrupted a good-size chuck of the world’s energy supply[/li][li]spent great chunks of money we can’t afford[/li][/ol]
…and the only thing we’ve gained is that the sub-troglodytes can sleep at night now that we finally “finished the job”.
Kerry knows two things: Iraq will get worse before it gets better, and the only thing distinguishing Iraq from Viet Nam at this point is the number of body bags.
The only way to keep the number of body bags low while Iraq returns to some kind of sanity is to make the percentage of troops on the ground who are American much, much smaller than it is right now. And that means that other nations have to want to come in, an attitude they are not about to consider for the sake of the current White House occupant, whose foreign policy “miscalculations” suggest he is in fact as asinine as he appeared to be on Thursday.
So a “global test” would be one in which we, I dunno, say, THINK AHEAD when mulling over potential national acts of derring-do: “Whose going be around to help pick up the pieces if this flash of presidential bravado proves to be a biiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake?” Poland?
Occam’s Razor says that Bush is deliberately misinterpreting Kerry’s statement in hopes of rallying his base – all he has to do is play a clip of Kerry saying “international test,” throw out a mangled interpretation, then pray his crowd either (a) didn’t see the quote in context and/or (b) buy Bush’s interpretation of it.
Kerry’s point was clear and unambiguous, but distorting the truth into unrecognizable shapes has been a hallmark of Bush’s campaign since day 1. As spoke said, this is merely a continuation of the Gingrich-Rove Sleazeball Political Warfare Techniques™ that the GOP has been using for the past decade.
I remember Kerry asking for an extension at one point, but he did it rather timidly and the moderator just blew him off. Pissed me off, too, because the last thing Kerry wants to do now is look timid. I can’t remember which question he did it on, though.
Kerry has explicitly stated over and over in this campaign that he would not hesitate to use military force if it were necessary to protect the country, so there’s absolutely no way he meant that he would require a UN resolution before acting in self-defense. That’s absurd. Nobody would say that. Don’t buy into the republican spin-machine.
But this whole thing is ridiculous. OF COURSE you have to have a reason to invade another country. And OF COURSE it has to be a real, legitimate reason that the rest of the world understands. I can’t even fucking believe that this would even be a point of contention. Have Americans gone mad? Sometimes I wonder. Scotandrsn covered it quite nicely, so I won’t even try.
So, Kerry is saying that all you have to do to justify an attack on another country is to be able to prove it your countrymen that the attack is OK?
Global just means that you have to “holsitically” justify to your own country, Right? Sounds more unilateral than Bush’s policy.
I didn’t say that international approval was excluded from the meaning of “global,” just that it was not the exclusive factor.
To me a “global test” means proving a necessity on both a domestic and international front.
Bush proved it to neither, and his simplistic characterizations about Kerry requiring international permission to “protect America” are really completely off target and dishonest.
A preemptive strike, by definition, is not a defensive action but an aggressive one. So yes, any country, not just the US, needs to clear a high hurdle of proof to the world that such a sufficient threat exists to justify aggressive action and that such an action is the only possible way to protect itself from this threat.
I belief the circumstances which would warrant a preemptive strike are so narrow and so unlikely as to be functionally impossible to ever meet.
One thing’s for sure, we can’t have rogue countries going around all by themselves declaring other sovereign nations to be “imminent threats” and arrogating for themselves the authority to invade them. Otherwise, anyone who wants to can declare the US to be a threat and decide that flying airplanes into towers are a justifiable defensive action. The invasion of Iraq was no more moprally defensible than 9/11. In fact it was worse. Bush has killed far more civilians that bin Laden did…and for less reason.
Actually, I don’t mean this and I don’t want to leave it hanging there. I’d rather just say he did it for no better reason.
I watched the debate, and had thought that “global” meant international, but now after reviewing the quote, I’m less sure. What seems to be getting left behind is the tenses in the sentence (and it is a tortured sentence):
I’m not a grammarian, so please be patient. Note the first part: “have to do it in a way that passes the test” – present tense; your country and people have to understand beforehand why this war is necessary.
Now, part deaux: “you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons” – past tense. You can prove it to the world afterwards that you we’rent making shit up.
This seems to fit the Iraq situation to a tee: the administration browbeated the US until our countrymen bought it, then came up empty (WMD) afterwards when justifying the whole shebang globally.
I’m still not sure if this is a good interpretation, but it fits Kerry’s other statements on the topic. I fault Kerry for obtuse sentence structure.
I don’t think that’s inconsistent with what I’ve been saying. One certainly wouldn’t expect any US politician to advocate waging a war that was approved by other countries but that wasn’t approved by the American public. Yes, global test means it’s OK with the folks at home **AND **the international community.
How this reveals the character of Bush is that Kerry plainly said at least five times that he would never cede decision making power regarding the safety of the US to anyone but the president, and that he would have no qualms acting pre-emptively to protect the security of the country. In the middle of speaking extemporaneously on the topic, he used a phrase that, if read completely independently of the entire discussion, might be interpreted in a way not meant by Kerry.
Thus, despite hearing Kerry’s stance clearly and explicitly stated multiple times, Bush goes on to lie about Kerry’s position. Either that, or he did not understand the multiple times that the information was presented to him.
What sad days are these when one-term ruffians may go about saying “Frenchman” at will to old ladies at hand-picked, loyalty oathed, political rallies.
Seriously, I hope after we get rid of Karl Rove people are able to act with more integrity and honesty.
Not Poland, sorry.
Nice that Bush doesn’t hold a grudge.
Good post scotandrsn.
See, this is what KILLS me about the whole republican-spin machine: People are making the absurd argument that Kerry isn’t fit to lead the country because he insulted the members of the “coalition of the willing” by saying they were duped. THEY KNOW PERFECTLY FUCKING WELL THAT THEY WERE DUPED. Kerry has insulted noone. He simply told the truth.
HtB that is exactly my point - Bush is dishonestly twisting Kerry’s words as he takes them out of context.
It seems so slimy and obvious to me.
[Beavis and Butthead]
Bush: “heh heh - he said ‘global’ - heh heh”
[/Beavis and Butthead]
The fact that the man is even being considered for a second term, and is considered Presidential, just boggles the mind…
I really don’t mind so much that Bush objects to this policy. He should just call by its correct name. It’s not “The Kerry Doctrine;” it’s “The Truman Doctrine.” Bush should be asked to justify why he has jettisoned a long-standing policy of maintaining the respect (if not the agreement) of the western allies.
So, I’ve got CNN on in the background, and Wolf Blitzer had a Dem and Pub operative on. He played the “global test” clip, and was going to ask them to explain their party’s position on that… and then they cut to Mt St Helens to show live shots of steam coming out of the volcano. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!
Maybe he’ll get back to it later…
I think were seeing hints of New World Order conspiracy paranoia here. Kerry’s opponents want desperately to believe that he will completely subordinate to some international mechanism or regime the authority of the US to take military action, even in cases of national defense (and apparently, there isn’t any other kind. How many times did Bush use “defend America” as a euphmism for invading Iraq?)
We’ve parsed the meaning of “global test” well enough in this thread. When we talk about the President “making the case” for war, we mean it in a political rather than legal sense. If Kerry meant that he would never take military action without the approval of the UN Security Council, he could have said that, but he obvously didn’t.
Colin Powell must be pissed that his own corollary to the Truman Doctrine is pissed on by the neo-cons.
I think “global” means overall but international concerns are major part of the “global” test.
I think it was an incredibly poor choice of words, and I bet Kerry has been kicking himself since last Thursday. But based on the context of the complete sentence, it’s clear what he meant. But it’s sooooo easy to pull “global” out of context.
He’d have been better off calling it a “sanity check”. But that would lead to discussions of the president’s sanity.
But didn’t his father announce the New World Order back in '91? (fourth paragraph from the bottom)
Ohhhhhh, I get it! You’re talking Illuminati, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg sorta stuff. Not that YOU take it seriously but there are some people who do.