Thursday, October 21, 2004
Kerry: UN yes, US, No
The buzz of yesterday was this quote from the WaPo about Kerry and the UN:
"Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, 'If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.' "
Neal Boortz has some of my favorite comments:
Read it again, folks. Then read it again after that. This isn't some ancient yammering from Kerry back in the 1970's. This is contemporary Kerry. This is Kerry after having served a decade in the Senate. This is Kerry saying that it OK for Americans to die fighting for a cause ratified by the United Nations, but not OK for American soldiers to sacrifice their lives just fighting for the United States ... fighting for their country. America is not worth dying for. Dying for the United Nations is.
What I want to know is how a man who hates his country as much as Kerry does, thinks he should be leader of that country.
I know now. The Belmont Club has a great answer:
America should subsume its national interest to a wider set of imperatives. 'America joins the world', 'No longer alone' is the ticket. The argument is based on a rejection of American "exceptionalism", and indeed the exceptionalism of any individual country or culture. If all cultures are equally valid then the US Constitution is nothing special; simply one arrangement among many and in fact perforce subordinate to a Universal Charter, in the way that a subset is necessarily contained in the superset. Any distaste is written off as sentimental attachment; a false ethnocentrism that will eventually join anthrocentrism and geocentrism in the wastebasket of old ideas. To necessity is added the force of inevitability. Iraq becomes a modern day Scopes Trial, the last hurrah of an insupportable conceit.
Nor is there anything to be alarmed at, we are assured. 'One World' may be a goal, but a distant goal, comfortably arrived at in stages. Nothing will be missed. Nothing essential really. It will all happen so gradually as to be imperceptible, except to bigots, who are always noticing something. The process will consist of a slow expansion of international understandings and a gradual diminution of individual action. Nations will habituate themselves to deferring to a Higher Good until it becomes unthinkable to do otherwise. We can take our time -- provided, and this is essential -- provided there are no questions about the eventual destination. It is breathtaking as a concept, and might be described as a second American Revolution; one we are witnessing now.
Kerry is soft on American Sovereignity, the stuff so many of our ancestors have struggled and died to create. That in itself is enough to disqualify him from leading this country. The cost in blood and hope and dreams deserves more than a Quisling for a president.
