Whose mistakes are worse?
Wonderful essay by
Mona Charen:
bq. Take heart America. John Kerry is too smart to make the kind of mistakes George W. Bush has made. His election (should it come to pass) will signal the dawn of a new era in which sophisticated internationalists will restore America's place in the world with skillful diplomacy and sound multilateralism. It will be the kind of administration that will make The New York Times and CBS News proud.
bq. For starters, President Kerry will persuade France and Germany to send troops to Iraq so that our guys can get a little R-and-R on the Riviera. Though it may have seemed that France was firmly opposed to liberating Iraq; and though it looked like France truly intended to set herself up as the counterweight to American global influence; and though France, Russia and China were lobbying to remove all sanctions against Iraq; and while some cynics may have noticed that many French concerns were doing extremely well on the UN's corrupt oil-for-food program; Kerry will overcome all of that.
bq. He'll also somehow finesse the small matter that the populations of France and Germany are adamantly opposed to the Iraq venture (as indeed was Great Britain's -- Blair supported us at considerable personal risk). Unlike Blair, Chirac and Schroeder agree with their people. Still, John Kerry is very bright. He is fluent in French and can say s'il vous plait. And presumably that clever Richard Holbrooke can say bitte.
bq. Further, Kerry will restore our standing with the United Nations. Why just in the last few days, Kerry has seized upon a report (which now turns out to be false, but that's a detail) provided by Mohamed el-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.N. report claimed that the United States had failed to secure 380 tons of high explosives at the Al-Qaqaa site. Kerry demonstrated his confidence in the U.N. by immediately accepting the report as true and declaring it to be "one of the great blunders of this administration."
bq. Except that, oops, it seems there were only 3 tons of missing explosives, and all of it probably disappeared before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
This is only about half of it - click on the link to read the rest.
She is the author of "
Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First"
Posted by DaveH at October 29, 2004 12:39 PM