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Senator Kerry’s Secret Plan for Ignominy in Iraq

In a speech before the VFW Sen. Kerry assured veterans that “I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side, because that’s the right way to get the job done in Iraq and bring our troops home.”

While it is reassuring to hear that the Democrat aspirant “knows what to do,” we would all take considerably more solace if he would deign to share it with us. In a deja vu reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s secret plan to “get us out of Vietnam,” John Kerry promises a guaranteed outcome to an unknowable situation. Nixon’s secret plan was the pattern bombing of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This was a horrific and cynical gesture that amounted to little more than a fig leaf for an ignominious retreat, and the abandonment of the South Vietnamese people to what seemed their inevitable fate. In light of this, one shudders at the prospect of Sen. Kerry’s secret plan and the perhaps justifiable reasons he has to keep it that way.

For a man that has recently suffered a precipitous drop in the polls, Sen. Kerry seems to have an unwavering confidence in the power of his own winning personality, since that is presumably what he means by his reference to “credibility.” Indeed he proffers no other reason why our “allies” will come to bail us out of a war that every politician in France and Germany has staked their very careers on opposing. While the junior senator from Massachusetts’ continuants may have a high tolerance for 180-degree policy shifts, his European comrades might find their constituencies expect a certain degree of consistency when it comes to spending their nations’ blood and treasure. But Sen. Kerry looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. He has implied that he has been involved in secret talks with his potential new colleagues in Europe, a la October Surprise. Just what has he promised them in return for their “support?” My guess, it will, at the very least, be Halliburton’s share of the graft opportunities of Iraq. More importantly, what have they offered in return for Sen. Kerry’s unauthorized concessions?

If that was all it took to get the French to open their checkbooks and military morgues most Americans would consider it a square deal. However, does anyone want to take any bets on the French and Germans actually doing their share of the heavy lifting in a conflict they so vehemently opposed? The most likely outcome is the non-coalition Europeans will get a substantial portion of the most lucrative contracting opportunities. France’s oil giant and Col. Khadafi’s business partner, FINA, will return to Iraq and undermine the coalition’s political agenda on the ground leading to further bloodshed and instability. Not a single French or German soldier will ever see the sunrise in Iraq. Monies (if any) contributed to the rebuilding of Iraq will amount to an infinitesimal fraction of what the new looting opportunities will have yielded for non-coalition “allies.” Finally, France and Germany will agree to reduce the shrill tone and volume of their anti-American rhetoric by 50% while maintaining a sustained deafening roar. Sen. Kerry’s agenda for “allied” support amounts to little more than paying extortion money to a criminal in the hopes that he will slander you with only half the news outlets in town.

The outcome in which the non-coalition Europeans get something tangible and our bonafide coalition allies get virtually nothing in return is actually one of the more optimistic scenarios. In WWII, France had relatively little enthusiasm for fighting but plenty of ambition when it came to division of the spoils. Ho Chi Min and his forces had consistently and reliably cooperated with American forces to rout the Japanese from Vietnam. America at that point was closely allied to Min and had promised him support for Vietnamese independence from colonial French tyranny after the war. When Japan and Germany surrendered, the French stepped forward with their list of demands for French acquiescence to Gen. Marshall’s plan for a New World Order in Europe. At the top of this list, France’s demand that her dominion over the enslaved peoples of Southeast Asia be ratified by the world’s democracies. In a disastrous gesture to appease our “ally” France, we betrayed our ally Vietnam. Ho Chi Min was maneuvered ever closer to Russian influence by our desertion, and through this to a more militant and virulent brand of revolutionary Marxism. We all know what happened to the French in Vietnam, and that ultimately the United States ended up spending our blood and treasure in a misguided attempt to clean up a French and Russian mess. In light of the lessons of history, it seems unlikely that appeasing France and Russia is, as Sen. Kerry says “the right way to get the job done.”

This brings me back to John Kerry’s secret plan. His principle criticism of the prosecution of the War in Iraq, other than we didn’t let the French veto it, seems to be that we need more troops. This sounds more like LBJ’s policy of escalation than the dovish image Sen. Kerry seeks to project to his base. What concerns me more however, is his obsession with dates certain for ending conflicts as well as his priority for getting the troops home. When an army is sent into the field, its first priority is victory. Richard Nixon’s secret plan also entailed ending a war in a hurry through a combination of escalation of hostilities, retreat and appeasement. Just one problem, Nixon ended the war but failed to, as Sen. Kerry put it, “get the job done.” Today hundreds of thousands of the victims of Vietnamese Communist atrocities lay buried in unmarked mass graves. Millions of people there live in abject poverty and under oppressive tyranny to this very day. America itself is still traumatized by the memory of a war in which victory was not the first priority and hence not achieved. For the sake of the people of Iraq as well as the United States, I sure hope Sen. John Kerry’s secret plan turns out better than Tricky Dick’s.

posted by Anonymous @ 8:44 PM