Little Red Blog

In what I hope will become a regular feature of his blog, and his nationally syndicated radio show, Hugh Hewitt offers the second weekly symposium of bloggers responding to a single question. The question this week: "What do Kerry's answers to today's press inquiries tell us about Kerry's worldview and character?" If you haven’t heard or read the brief comments, here they are.

Q. "If you are elected, given Paul Bremer's remarks, and deteriorating conditions as you have judged them, would you be prepared to commit more troops."

A. "I will do what the generals believe we need to do without having any chilling effect, as the president put in place by firing General Shinseki, and I'll have to wait until January 20th. I don't know what I am going to find on January 20th, the way the president is going. If the president just does more of the same every day, and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking. Now, I just don't know. I can't tell you. What I'll tell you is, I have a plan. I have laid out my plan to America, and I know that my plan has a better chance of working. And in the next days I am going to say more about exactly how we are going to do what has been available to this Administration that it has chosen not to do. But I will make certain that our troops are protected. I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, and I will make sure that we are successful, and I know exactly what I am going to do and how to do it."

Q. Duelfer also said that Saddam fully intended to resume his weapons of mass destruction program because he felt that the sanctions were just going to fritter away.

A. But we wouldn't let them just fritter away. That's the point. Folks! If You've got a guy who's dangerous, you've got a guy you suspect is going to do something, you don't lift the sanctions, that's the fruits of good diplomacy. This Administration...I beg your pardon?

Q. You just said [Bush] fictionalized him [Saddam] as an enemy. Now you just said he's dangerous?
A. No. What I said. I said it all the time. Consistently I have said Saddam Hussein presented a threat. I voted for the authorization, because he presented a threat. There are all kinds of threats in the world, ladies and gentlemen. Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Are we invading all 60 countries? 35 to 40 countries had the same --more-- capability of creating weapons, nuclear weapons, at the time the president invaded Iraq than Iraq did. Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China? The point is that there are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats and I consistently laid out to the president how to deal with Saddam Hussein, who was a threat. If I'd been president, I'd have wanted the same threat of force. But as I have said a hundred times if not a thousand iin this campaign, there was a right way to use that authority and a wrong way. The president did it the wrong way. He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, against my warnings and other people's warnings. And now we have the mess we have today. It is completely consistent that you can see him as a threat and deal with him realistically just as we saw the Soviet Union and China and others as threats and have dealt with them in other ways."

Not too long ago I had a conversation with my one of my sons that included his asking the same questions Kerry uses rhetorically in his response. The challenge in that conversation as in this commentary isn’t in the refutation of the comments, but in the exploration of the thoughts that led to them.

What do I see of Kerry’s worldview and character?

First his character. He is running for the Presidency of the United States of America and in doing so is relying on lies, fears and ambiguities as a tool to dupe American’s into voting for him. No further evidence is required to state, unequivocally, that Senator Kerry does not possess the character, in particular the integrity, the intellectual honesty and the balancing effect of moral principles to be President of this land. General Shinseki was not fired. Kerry lied. Kerry panders fear and untruth to those who will only hear cBS’s and MSNBC’s coverage of the exchange by stating that he doesn’t know what he’ll find on January 20th as the President does more of the same and the situation "deteriorates" even offering that he may inherit a "Lebanon" like Iraq. More on this later. And finally his utter lack of moral guidance is shown in his continued inability to diagnose the obvious. al-Qaeda is not THE enemy. al-Qaeda is a product of the enemy. The enemy is Islamo-fascism. Kerry either doesn’t know this, unacceptable for a candidate for the highest office in the land, or he is unwilling to state it, a sign of intellectual dishonesty more often found in the naïve and uninitiated world of middle schoolers.

As to his world view, his response to the follow-up question tells all that we’ll ever need. Senator Kerry asks "Are we invading all 60 countries?" where al-Qaeda members may be hiding; and "Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them (countries with WMD’s or the capability to create them)? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China?" These questions and his subsequent self-serving answers show that he believes the American populace is one of ignorance and that he may dupe them into believing that his juvenile logic holds weight. The world, prior to 9.11, the world he remains in, and one in which he supported the wrong side, does not exist any longer. I answered my son’s question, and frankly, I was happy to do so, but to hear this from Senator Kerry boils my blood.

Of the 60 countries with al-Qaeda members in them the U.S., the U.K., Pakistan, Indonesia and others who are allies in the Global War on Terror are included. No, my son, we do not have to invade each of the nations who have Islamo-fascist terrorist in them. We have to ensure that those sick worshippers of death are prevented from receiving the tools they use to attack innocent people and we have to pursue them through police and investigative means until they are captured or killed, but no, we do not have to invade. And son, we aren’t invading the other nations with WMD’s or the ability to create them either. Why? Well, again, we and several of our allies are some of them, our aim with WMD’s, and I know you don’t hear this often so I’ll say it slowly son. Our aim with WMD’s is to ensure they do not end up in the hands of the terrorist. This being the case, only those nations that possess them AND support terror are at risk of being invaded. Yes, son, Saddam did support terror, remember the money he send to the families of those who kill Israeli’s in homicide bombings, remember how he worked with Qaddafi on the development of weapons, and remember how al-Zawahri ran from Afghanistan to Baghdad after we liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Most simply put Senator Kerry is a man of poor character following an ideological view of the world that pre-dates this war. As Hugh notes, the Samaritan, Zeus Carver, in ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ says to John McClane – "I don't like you because you're going to get me killed!"

Senator Kerry, I don’t like you because you’re going to get many more Americans killed if you become President. Thankfully, the people of the U.S., God bless them, aren’t as ignorant and gullible as you believe they are, so that isn’t going to happen. The good news is that you can go back to running forgettable marathons and we can forget about you after November 2nd.