Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

John Kerry has nothing to apologize for

The furor that has erupted over John Kerry's comments in California earlier this week about George W. Bush's failure to do his homework before launching a preemptive invasion of Iraq is a manufactured controversy that Republicans and right wing media outlets have seized on in a desperate gambit to go on the offense.

Kerry, who has admitted what he said was not what he meant to say, has nothing to apologize for. He's free to do so, but he shouldn't feel obligated to.

He did not insult America's men and women in uniform. It is the administration and its Republican allies who have done that - by sending our troops into harm's way for no good reason without proper equipment. Remember Donald Rumsfeld saying "you go to war with the army you have?"

What about an apology from Bush about the administration's failure to prepare for and respond to Hurricane Katrina? What about an apology for rolling back worker and environmental protections, running up huge deficits, and giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy - or subsidies to America's biggest, most profitable corporations at the expense of working families?

All this outrage over a botched joke - as Kerry put it - well, where's the outrage over this Republican administration and Congress' terrible decision making?

Kerry's intent was to poke fun at Bush:
"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."
And as the Seattle P-I has noted, even if you disregard Kerry's intent and put it aside, and take his spoken words literally, he would still have had a point:
Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces -- Kerry was one of them -- military service has long been an opportunity employer for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector. Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education.

And wars, including this one, are often fought by those less privileged -- albeit no less smart -- than the sons and daughters of those who lead us into them.
Fortunately, despite intense pressure from the Republican Noise Machine, Kerry showed us, at least initially, he's learned his lesson from 2004, and fired back with a strong response.
"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic GOP playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq.

It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it.

These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men. And this time it won't work because we're going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions.

No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq ."
When you're attacked, you don't bend to pressure. You respond from a position of strength, not weakness. You counterattack and you reframe - you turn the tables. You change the discourse.

Democrats need to stop rolling over under fire. Democrats who have decided to come out and criticize Kerry for "disparaging our troops" are not only wrong, but they are playing into the Republicans' frame - reinforcing it. And they're hurting our party's unity needlessly.

Republicans were shocked in 2004 when we Democrats refused to yield and concede the election to Rossi when he was barely ahead after two counts. Then we stood fast against the revote nonsense and defended our candidate in a drawn out legal challenge, with the facts on our side. And we won a huge victory.

Politics is not for the faint of heart. Democrats can't afford not to play hardball. Otherwise, we lose - because the Republicans will, and they do. So the lesson here is: don't allow the other side to capitalize on your mistakes...and don't apologize just because the opposition is demanding you do so.

Don't play their game. Reframe and respond from a position of strength.

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