Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Why I Won't Vote for Kerry
I've held off posting this because, frankly, I got tired of bashing Kerry. But he's so bashable.
A few weeks ago I was treated to a comment comparing Bush's and and Kerry's service during the Vietnam era, to the effect that at least Kerry was there (in Vietnam). This is the substance of my reply:
Yep, he was there for all of 4 months to get his resume bullet point. And as soon as he got off active duty he spent the next 3 or 4 years dissing his comrades in arms, and tearing down the United States.
Kerry has campaigned for two years on his Vietnam service -- he can't utter two sentences in public without referring to it. As short as his Vietnam tour was, nobody in the Administration or in the Republican Party hierarchy has described his service as anything but honorable (if you have evidence to the contrary, post the quote, including who said it, when and in what publication or video it appeared). But Kerry doesn't want to talk about his much longer association with the VVAW and his other antiwar activities after he left the Navy. Seems to me that if Kerry's Vietnam service should inform the voters as to his qualifications to be the Commander in Chief, then so should everything that he's done since. It's disingenuous to tout the one and claim that the other (and more recent) is irrelevant due to the passage of time.
Lately, Kerry has been making noises to the effect that he'd be as tough on terrorists as Bush -- maybe tougher. I don't believe him. There's nothing in his public record that gives me any confidence that the man has any foundational principles. He's been on both sides of so many issues that he can say "I voted for it" to any imaginable audience on almost any issue. But at the end of the day, in the final votes when it really counts, Kerry has always voted with the most liberal members of his party. If elected he will be under unbelievable pressure from the MoveOn wing of the Democratic party to cut and run from Iraq and return to a purely defensive posture against the terrorists, and that's what I think he'll do. I believe he'd return the fight against Islamofascist terrorists to the level of, and using the tactics of, the Clinton administration: Send in the lawyers! If he does that, we will all soon see that September 11 was merely a warm-up for the main event. There's no such thing as an impregnable defense.
Job #1 for the President is to defend the United States. I won't vote for Kerry because there's nothing in his public record that indicates to me that he'd effectively do that, and there's nothing he or anyone else can say that will convince me otherwise. I'm not usually a one-issue voter, but when the United States is fighting a war against fanatics with a religious mission to destroy us and all we stand for, and who have no use for the rules of war or any rules other than their own hypermilitant interpretation of the Koran, then that issue trumps all the others.
If you believe Kerry would be a good President, by all means vote for him. But in choosing the man who gets your vote, my advice is to determine which one Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would want to occupy the White House, and then vote for the other guy.
I'm done now.
A few weeks ago I was treated to a comment comparing Bush's and and Kerry's service during the Vietnam era, to the effect that at least Kerry was there (in Vietnam). This is the substance of my reply:
Yep, he was there for all of 4 months to get his resume bullet point. And as soon as he got off active duty he spent the next 3 or 4 years dissing his comrades in arms, and tearing down the United States.
Kerry has campaigned for two years on his Vietnam service -- he can't utter two sentences in public without referring to it. As short as his Vietnam tour was, nobody in the Administration or in the Republican Party hierarchy has described his service as anything but honorable (if you have evidence to the contrary, post the quote, including who said it, when and in what publication or video it appeared). But Kerry doesn't want to talk about his much longer association with the VVAW and his other antiwar activities after he left the Navy. Seems to me that if Kerry's Vietnam service should inform the voters as to his qualifications to be the Commander in Chief, then so should everything that he's done since. It's disingenuous to tout the one and claim that the other (and more recent) is irrelevant due to the passage of time.
Lately, Kerry has been making noises to the effect that he'd be as tough on terrorists as Bush -- maybe tougher. I don't believe him. There's nothing in his public record that gives me any confidence that the man has any foundational principles. He's been on both sides of so many issues that he can say "I voted for it" to any imaginable audience on almost any issue. But at the end of the day, in the final votes when it really counts, Kerry has always voted with the most liberal members of his party. If elected he will be under unbelievable pressure from the MoveOn wing of the Democratic party to cut and run from Iraq and return to a purely defensive posture against the terrorists, and that's what I think he'll do. I believe he'd return the fight against Islamofascist terrorists to the level of, and using the tactics of, the Clinton administration: Send in the lawyers! If he does that, we will all soon see that September 11 was merely a warm-up for the main event. There's no such thing as an impregnable defense.
Job #1 for the President is to defend the United States. I won't vote for Kerry because there's nothing in his public record that indicates to me that he'd effectively do that, and there's nothing he or anyone else can say that will convince me otherwise. I'm not usually a one-issue voter, but when the United States is fighting a war against fanatics with a religious mission to destroy us and all we stand for, and who have no use for the rules of war or any rules other than their own hypermilitant interpretation of the Koran, then that issue trumps all the others.
If you believe Kerry would be a good President, by all means vote for him. But in choosing the man who gets your vote, my advice is to determine which one Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would want to occupy the White House, and then vote for the other guy.
I'm done now.
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