Home

 Articles

 Op-ed

 Authors

 FAQ

 Leaving Islam
 Library
 Gallery
 Comments
 Debates
  Links
 Forum

 

 

Kerry For President? 
An Election Like No Other 

By Ali Sina 

I watched the first round of the presidential debate between President Bush and Senator Kerry  with a lot of interest. I am not an American but I believe the outcome of this election will affect not just America but the entire world. If you don’t accuse me of being hyperbolic I dare to say that this is the most important election in the history of mankind. On this election may depend the future of the world and whether there would be another world war or perhaps it could be avoid. This was one debate I could not miss.  

I have to acknowledge that Sen. Kerry was better prepared and was more eloquent than President Bush. But do eloquence and being articulate really equate to wisdom and statesmanship? Please do not misunderstand me, I am not drawing any comparison but merely trying to make my point. Hitler was an impressive orator but of course he was a very wrong person to lead his country.  

So with this in mind I put aside the eloquence factor and tried to understand the message that each one of these candidates was delivering, peer into their character and appraise their capability as the commander in chief of the most powerful country in the history of mankind.

Sen. Kerry said many things that  sounded logical. He said North Korea now has nuclear bombs and Iran is in pursuit of them and no one is doing anything about it. I agree with that.  

He said that not enough is being done to buy the uranium-enriched stockpile that the Soviets had developed and this could fall in the hands of wrong bidders. I agree with that too.

He said American ports are not secure. This is true. But in reality terrorists do not need to send their destructive terror through the ports. There are so many ways they could hit America and the rest of the civilized world that only their diabolic imagination sets the limit. We really can’t protect ourselves everywhere. If you try to secure the airports by checking the passengers, they could blow themselves up in the crowded lines while waiting to be checked. They could attack schools, subways, busses, hospitals, restaurants, water-reservoirs, shopping malls…, the list is end less. Can we really secure all these places? So the point is moot. Yes it would be nice to secure the ports but does that make America any safer? What if atomic bombs are delivered to various ports and detonated simultaneously while waiting inspection? What Sen. Kerry is proposing will only make Americans spend more money for a false sense of security.

Sen. Kerry also berated his rival and said that the war in Iraq was a wrong war at a wrong time. Then in that debate he said something different. He said that he agreed with the war but he would have fought it differently. In other words it wasn’t the wrong war at a wrong time but a war that was fought in a wrong way. The Senator however did not go into specifics to explain in what ways he would have fought this war differently. I wanted to know, and a google search brought me the answer: The following is part of an interview that Sen. Kerry gave in 1998:

"Saddam Hussein is pursuing a program to build weapons of mass destruction and I support regime change, with ground troops if necessary.  I am way ahead of the commander in chief, and I’m probably way ahead of my colleagues and certainly of much of the country.” (1)  

It is clear that Sen. Kerry realized the danger that Saddam was posing and he wanted to remove him by sending ground troops to Iraq way before 9/11.

Isn’t this exactly what the President did? So in what ways Sen. Kerry would have fought this war differently? 

In 2002 he reiterated his concern about the Iraqi dictator and warned, “he may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States”. (1)

But what we heard in this debate was completely a different story. The Senator said "Let me be as blunt and direct with the American people as I can be; the invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy -- al Qaeda."

Are we to understand that in previous occasions when the Senator made the above statements he was not blunt and direct with the Americans?

It seems that Sen. Kerry's bone of contention with the President is that he acted alone without involving other countries in the process. In other words the Senator wants to be a team player and make sure that everyone is happy. How noble! But again we remember him saying that if push comes to shove he would act alone even if the UN Security Council fails to act. 

2003 - "If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."(1)

Wasn't this exactly what the President did? So I can't understand why the Senator is attacking the president for doing exactly what he [Sen. Kerry] said should be done.  

In this debate, Sen. Kerry also said a lot of things that are clichés, like “reaching out to Muslims.” What does reaching out to Muslims mean? Is that a new term for appeasement? How does he plan to do that? Build more Mosques in America? Give more special rights to Muslims? Make more compromises? Or perhaps offer them Israel as the sacrificial lamb?

He said that he wants to enlist the support of all other countries in the fight against terrorism. What if other countries do not want to come aboard? Would he sit on his hands and wait until the terrorists become stronger? The Europeans have totally different priorities. All they care for is to sign lucrative trade agreements with the rogue states. Terrorism and the stability of the world is the last thing in their minds. This is to them an American problem.  

Page 2

 

 

 

 

Articles Op-ed Authors Debates Leaving Islam FAQ
Comments Library Gallery Video Clips Books Sina's Challenge
 

  ©  copyright You may translate and publish the articles in this site only if you provide a link to the original page.