Kerry's $87 billion debt

"What does it gain America to win a war and lose a peace? The Bush failures will cost us dearly in the months ahead...What's needed now is leadership to finish the job in Iraq the right way because America can and must do better." John Kerry For President homepage, The Issues.

"I cannot vote for the President's $87 billion request..." ~ Senator John Kerry, speech on the floor of the US Senate, 17 October 2003.

John Kerry might honestly believe that the way to win the peace in Iraq is to not give Iraq any money and to pull our troops out immediately. He certainly voted to do so. But judging from the larger context of his statements and stands, it seems unlikely. He's never said we should pull our troops out, and he comes from the party usually most eager to lavish ever more money on foreign and humanitarian aid. No, it seems more likely that Kerry simply believed in one thing, and voted for another.

What this says about Kerry as a politician, a possible president, a citizen, and a man is one thing. (To summarize, not much). But you can't blame Kerry. He's simply playing to type. He's playing politics in its worst sense.

Senator Kerry is hardly alone. He has plenty of company. But few others have so fully abandoned any pretense of concern for principle. Most who bother to run for and win elective office at least evince a shred of interest in seeing that their political words and political actions have some semblance of correlation. If ever a Democrat deserves a compliment, it is Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman who stuck to their guns and voted for the $87 billion despite that it was political suicide, but because is was the right thing to do. It was just, it was noble, it was needed. They practiced politics in its old, noble sense: today, it would be called statesmanship.

So perhaps we can and should blame John Kerry. He had examples of better conduct right in front of him, after all. But let us at least be accurate in what we are accusing him of. He barely even merits the insult "politician", because so little of what he does is actual politics in any other sense than machiavellian self interest (talk does not become "politics" just because it is talk about political and policy topics. Devoid of cotent, talk about politics follows the same path as other chatter, and becomes noise).

Senator Kerry is a partisan, and little more. Kerry's vote on the $87 billion was opportunistic, wrong-headed, unprincipled, and very nearly immoral. It betrayed bad habits of thought and decision-making in a lawmaker. Kerry owes the Iraqi people a debt. Let's hope he never gets another opportunity to default.