kolmapäev, aprill 21, 2004
Damn You, Liberal Media! Damn You!
The Washington Post editorial board on Kerry on Iraq.
Now, yes, Kerry has changed his phrasing of his Iraq position in recent weeks. He has said that stability is a more important short-term goal than democracy. But those damn liberals at the Post chose to ignore the second half of that statement, which is that the ultimate goal is still democracy. It would just be easier to get there if we did it incrementally. This initially struck me as a bad thing for Kerry to be saying, and I still think it's bad politically, but he's right. And I think this is one of those times where he's speaking the unpopular truth and Bush is just saying what people want to hear.
You don't go from zero to democracy in 16 months.
The only reason Bush is rushing things is because he made a political decision to set a deadline to hand over power to a democratic Iraq before the election. This is why we're sitting here, just over two months from the deadline, still not knowing who we're handing power to, with cars still blowing up in the streets of Basra. We're trying to do too much too fast and we're getting burned. Kerry's right that we may need to seek middle ground for a while before pushing on to the ultimate goal.
And yes, there is another option besides democracy and fostering terror. Kuwait and Jordan, for example, manage to maintain order without harboring terrorists or allowing representative democracy. Of course, that's not the ideal situation. But nothing about Iraq has been ideal so far. That's also not what Kerry is promoting. He's still in favor of democracy. The Washington Post just doesn't want you to know that.
|
The Washington Post editorial board on Kerry on Iraq.
Now, yes, Kerry has changed his phrasing of his Iraq position in recent weeks. He has said that stability is a more important short-term goal than democracy. But those damn liberals at the Post chose to ignore the second half of that statement, which is that the ultimate goal is still democracy. It would just be easier to get there if we did it incrementally. This initially struck me as a bad thing for Kerry to be saying, and I still think it's bad politically, but he's right. And I think this is one of those times where he's speaking the unpopular truth and Bush is just saying what people want to hear.
You don't go from zero to democracy in 16 months.
The only reason Bush is rushing things is because he made a political decision to set a deadline to hand over power to a democratic Iraq before the election. This is why we're sitting here, just over two months from the deadline, still not knowing who we're handing power to, with cars still blowing up in the streets of Basra. We're trying to do too much too fast and we're getting burned. Kerry's right that we may need to seek middle ground for a while before pushing on to the ultimate goal.
And yes, there is another option besides democracy and fostering terror. Kuwait and Jordan, for example, manage to maintain order without harboring terrorists or allowing representative democracy. Of course, that's not the ideal situation. But nothing about Iraq has been ideal so far. That's also not what Kerry is promoting. He's still in favor of democracy. The Washington Post just doesn't want you to know that.
