Vote Against Kerry
Kerry was right about one thing–the whole world will be watching what we say through our votes. What they know is that no one can defeat us on a battlefield. Today, they use our political divisions and the opportunism that widens them to defeat us at the ballot box. That is precisely what those who mean us harm will conclude they have done if Kerry wins tomorrow.
France and Russia will conclude that they have a free hand to continue auctioning off the legitimacy of the United Nations.
Zarkawi will have learned that if he sends us enough videos–and heads–that we will shrink from fighting him and leave him alone to carve out his sanctuary.
Bin Laden will credit himself for tipping the scales through his crude threat to target only those states that vote for Bush.
Nations like Korea, Taiwan, and Japan will conclude that American voters are too unpredictable to count on for protection, and that they need their own nuclear deterrents to stay safe.
Nations like Britain, Australia, and Italy will never again join a coalition of the wobbly.
China will vastly accelerate its arms purchases and naval exercises off Taiwan, testing a president it perceives as weak.
Kim Jong-Il will have learned that America will never take action unless the U.N. certifies that we have unassailable proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that he will be judged by leaders who always elevate the false hope of negotiations over the experience that only toughness makes negotiations work. He will not expect to hear the words “human rights” from the American side of the table, because weak men like Jack Pritchard will occupy our side of it. And if we don’t talk about human rights, who will?
They will all conclude that we have looked our enemy in the face and turned away in horror, wishing somehow that it will all just go away.
It won’t, of course.
You may be thinking by now that I am being unfair to Kerry. But people in other nations perceive many things much like half of all Americans see them. Half of this nation tonight lives with the dread that the other half will forfeit our collective will to preserve ourselves. I could be wrong, of course. In which case, Zarkawi, Chicac, Putin, bin Laden, and Kim would probably be wrong, too. Which means they are likely to commit grave miscalculations, which is how wars usually start.
I do not credit the Bush Administration for perfection. I could go on for another page about things that he could have done better in may ways in hindsight. I disagree with most of his fiscal policies and many of his social policies. But I can’t afford to vote on those issues when people in the Pankisi Gorge are already planning the next Beslan just in time for my son to start kindergarten. This year, I’m a single issue voter, and that issue is the war. No war plan survives contact with the enemy, and in overall historical terms, we have conquered two nations and destroyed two mortal threats at the cost of just over 1,000 lives–a cost that is both immeasurable and infinitessimal, in the context of Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima, Verdun, Fredricksburg, and Stalingrad. We seem to have lost track of the elemental truth that war is not fun. Astonishing! This makes too many of us want to quit, which tempts an opportunist to offer us a way . . . any way. John Kerry’s preposterous plan (demolished here) to get us out of Iraq is to ask other nations to assume a burden from which he would extricate us, even at the cost of failing to destroy those who would murder our children in their beds. These other nations are already on record as saying they’re not playing. That’s not a plan; it’s Disney.
There’s only one ally that will bail us out in Iraq. The name of that ally is “Iraq.” We must train them to fight on their own, and give them the fire support and backup they need until the Iraqis can do it alone. If they will fight, and they are, the war is winnable, if we have the will to fight until we win. There is no other way out that would not irreversably embolden the terrorists. Failure would leave al Qaeda in charge of huge swath of the country, more dangerous than ever.
To John Kerry, every war is still Viet Nam. We cannot trust him to protect us by fighting to win far from our own shores. He lacks the moral certainty to face the question that we will face, after all diplomacy has failed–as it will fail–when Iran and North Korea still refuse to disarm: “Now what?” He lacks the moral clarity to see that we have a right and responsibility to kill those who would kill us.