councilor.org  


dems, etc
Source Yoshie Furuhashi
Date 04/02/21/23:48

Lou wrote:

>>I don't see a huge diff between dems and repubs. BUT Kerry won't
>>privatize social security and won't make the judicial appointments that
>>the Bush gang will make. It's not much, but it's something. The dems
>>also set up different expectations for fairness and legality than do the
>>repub/neo-cons.
>
>Of course Kerry is marginally better.

Kerry will be the lesser evil on lesser issues, but he may be the
greater evil on a few crucial issues:

In addition to his fulsome support for Israel and votes for the
"Welfare Reform" and the Patriot Act, John Kerry has taken an even
more hawkish stance than Bush on the occupation of Iraq:

*****   Kerry warns of 'cut and run' in Iraq
Democrat assails Bush policy; aide keeps open possibility of sending
more U.S. troops
Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry speaking on the campaign
trail in Dover, N.H., last month.
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - In a major national security address Wednesday
Democratic presidential contender John Kerry was sounding an alarm
about premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. "I fear that in the run-up
to the 2004 election the administration is considering what is
tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy," Kerry said in remarks prepared
for delivery to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Massachusetts senator accused Bush and his aides of a "sudden
embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal
without adequate stability," which he called "an invitation to
failure."

He contended that it would be "a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal
of principle" to accelerate the transfer of authority to Iraqis so as
to allow "a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops."

Send more troops?

Kerry foreign policy advisor Rand Beers told reporters Kerry "would
not rule out the possibility" of sending additional U.S. troops to
Iraq.

"It is very clear the number of troops is inadequate" in Iraq, Beers
told reporters in a telephone conference call previewing the speech.

Kerry's first preference, he said, would be to persuade foreign
governments to deploy more troops to help share the burden with
Americans.

But by not foreclosing the possibility of dispatching more U.S.
troops to Iraq, Kerry seems to have changed his position and to have
repositioned himself as a more hawkish alternative to Democratic
presidential front-runner Howard Dean. . . .

Whether Bush or Kerry gets elected, counter-insurgency warfare
against Iraqi guerrillas will continue.  If anything, Kerry is likely
to escalate it, sending more US and foreign troops to Iraq.
Washington doesn't have many more US troops to spare, but a
Democratic president can better persuade some foreign governments to
"share the burden" by cutting more economic deals with them than a
unilateralist Republican has.  A Democratic president with a dual
record of being a "war hero" and an "anti-Vietnam War activist" like
Kerry might even accomplish the currently impossible: reinstate the
draft under the guise of "national service" with a populist rhetoric
of "shared sacrifice."

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