Why can't "you can lead ... if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place"?

[John_Mace]

Let’s look at what Kerry actually said in the debate:

LEHRER: All right, new question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.

Speaking of Vietnam, you spoke to Congress in 1971, after you came back from Vietnam, and you said, quote, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?

KERRY: No, and they don’t have to, providing we have the leadership that we put – that I’m offering.

I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that. And from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority, because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, and I did accept that intelligence.

But I also laid out a very strict series of things we needed to do in order to proceed from a position of strength. Then the president, in fact, promised them. He went to Cincinnati and he gave a speech in which he said, “We will plan carefully. We will proceed cautiously. We will not make war inevitable. We will go with our allies.”

He didn’t do any of those things. They didn’t do the planning. They left the planning of the State Department in the State Department desks. They avoided even the advice of their own general. General Shinsheki, the Army chief of staff, said you’re going to need several hundred thousand troops. Instead of listening to him, they retired him. The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, “Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor.” That’s what we have here.

And what we need now is a president who understands how to bring these other countries together to recognize their stakes in this. They do have stakes in it. They’ve always had stakes in it.

The Arab countries have a stake in not having a civil war. The European countries have a stake in not having total disorder on their doorstep.

But this president hasn’t even held the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together and get them to invest in those states. In fact, he’s done the opposite. He pushed them away.

When the Secretary General Kofi Annan offered the United Nations, he said, “No, no, we’ll go do this alone.”

To save for Halliburton the spoils of the war, they actually issued a memorandum from the Defense Department saying, “If you weren’t with us in the war, don’t bother applying for any construction.”

That’s not a way to invite people.

So, what Kerry is saying is that we can WIN the war if he is elected. But that doesn’t address the issue of whether or not the war was a mistake. And he does seem to strongly imply that the war was a mistake with his references to what Bush did wrong in the lead-up to the war.

Like I said-- it’s a difficult situation and I don’t envy Kerry one bit for having to try to articulate it without getting sliced to pieces by the media.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@LilShieste

So (for my clarification), it’s not so much a matter of Kerry saying that the war was a mistake, but of Kerry mentioning how the Iraq picture painted by Bush is unrealistically colorful…?

Sort of. The conversation seemed to go like this:

K: This war is bullshit.
B: How can you expect people to follow you if you’re such a Grumpy Gus?
K: But the war really is bullshit, because of A, B, and C.
B: I just think you’re sending mexed missages.

It should’ve gone like this:
K: This war is bullshit.
B: How can you expect people to follow you if you’re such a Grumpy Gus?
K: Dude, it’s not being grumpy to tell it like it is. It’s called being honest. Look into it.

(slightly paraphrased)
Daniel

[LilShieste]

Thanks for the explanation/clarification, LHoD. I can kind of see where you (and others) are coming from, now.

@John Mace

Like I said-- it’s a difficult situation and I don’t envy Kerry one bit for having to try to articulate it without getting sliced to pieces by the media.

I agree, wholeheartedly… except that I don’t think it’s the “media” that slices his quotes/statements to pieces.

LilShieste

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@John Mace

So, what Kerry is saying is that we can WIN the war if he is elected. But that doesn’t address the issue of whether or not the war was a mistake. And he does seem to strongly imply that the war was a mistake with his references to what Bush did wrong in the lead-up to the war.

Like I said-- it’s a difficult situation and I don’t envy Kerry one bit for having to try to articulate it without getting sliced to pieces by the media.

Elsewhere, although I don’t know if he ever said “The war is a mistake,” he said things very close to that:

Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we’re there. We have to succeed. We can’t leave a failed Iraq. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake of judgment to go there and take the focus off of Osama bin Laden. It was. Now, we can succeed. But I don’t believe this president can. I think we need a president who has the credibility to bring the allies back to the table and to do what’s necessary to make it so America isn’t doing this alone.
…
What I think troubles a lot of people in our country is that the president has just sort of described one kind of mistake. But what he has said is that, even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, even knowing there was no imminent threat, even knowing there was no connection with Al Qaida, he would still have done everything the same way. Those are his words.

Now, I would not. So what I’m trying to do is just talk the truth to the American people and to the world. The truth is what good policy is based on. It’s what leadership is based on.

Seems to me pretty clear that he’s saying going to war was a mistake, but that now we’re there, we gotta follow through. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all.

Daniel

[John_Mace]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Seems to me pretty clear that he’s saying going to war was a mistake, but that now we’re there, we gotta follow through. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all.l

Yes, and that’s the tough thing here. If we assume the war was a mistake (which I think both of us do), what do you do next? If we bug out, we’ll be condemning the Iraqis to a devastating civil war. If we stay, we are asking Americans to die for a mistake. Unfortunately, I think we must opt for the latter, and try out best to make sure that some good comes from what we have done.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@John Mace

Yes, and that’s the tough thing here. If we assume the war was a mistake (which I think both of us do), what do you do next? If we bug out, we’ll be condemning the Iraqis to a devastating civil war. If we stay, we are asking Americans to die for a mistake. Unfortunately, I think we must opt for the latter, and try out best to make sure that some good comes from what we have done.

I agree with that. I’m trying to think of a non-cornball analogy. Hmm.

Didja ever catch the third season of Buffy, where Faith convinces Buffy to knock over a pawn shop in order to get some weaponry to fight the bad guys? They did it, and it was a mistake. But once it was a done deed, Buffy still used those weapons to kill vampires: returning the weapons to the store wouldn’t have helped, and the vamps needed killin’.

No, I guess that doesn’t work.
Daniel

[blowero]

@WordMan

To think that someone can’t voice an opposing view, then assume office and lead effectively is a simplistic position that seems condescending to me as a voter. Bush comes across poorly with that position, IMHO. America is capable of weighing different points of view and acting to stop terror.

I’ll go one further on that - it’s asinine. I just can’t believe that anyone takes such a silly argument seriously. It boggles my mind.

[ZombiesAteMyBrain]

@athelas

I think that the President was clumsily drawing the distinction between disagreement about the validity of war and undermining our country’s position in said war. Kerry has done both; he has made valid criticisms of the plan for war, but he has also insulted our allies with slogans such as “a phony coalition” and “coalition of the coerced”. That, I think, is what Bush was getting at.

As a UK citizen, I gotta say that it seems like a phony coalition to me - at least where the UK is concerned. Blair blatantly ignored the wishes of the people here, and even some of his own advisors, to drag us into a war that the British people didn’t want. He’s admitted that this is why people no longer trust the government,
but then follows by thumbing his nose at the people and saying that he still believed that he was right.

The Times & The Sunday Times

As Blair was giving his speech, the father of one of our dead soldiers was threatening to commit suicide outside unless Blair apologised for the death of his son http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=566782 . Blair actually cut the word ‘sorry’ out of his speech at the last minute - a mistake in my view - but perhaps he was afraid that Bush would no longer respect him if he did something so wimpy as apologise.

[AZCowboy]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I’m trying to think of a non-cornball analogy.

It was right there in the debate - the “Pottery Barn” rule. Sure, it was misquoted and misattributed, but hey, there it was.

But it is applicable nonetheless. It acknowledges that we screwed the pooch, and recognizes we are now obligated to do our best to make it right.