SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. — Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry got a boost last week when 27 retired U.S. diplomats, admirals and four-star generals, including a number of prominent Republican appointees from former Bush and Reagan administrations, publicly urged Americans to vote President Bush out of office.
They did not explicitly endorse Kerry, but the old warriors and insiders find themselves far more comfortable with the Massachusetts senator than with Bush when it comes to their favorite subject. Not only has Kerry firmly surrounded himself with Clinton standard-bearers on foreign policy and defense, but he has espoused his own brand of warmongering.
I would love nothing better than to see Bush out of office, but Kerry is a gloomy alternative. Worse yet, in the short term, his "me too, only better" approach to the war on terrorism could actually serve to make the United States less safe.
Kerry's defense plans might be a slam-dunk for the atherosclerotic set in the national security community, but here is the alternative that the senator offers to Democrats and people of liberal values in November:
* no plan to withdraw from Iraq, not even the kind of "secret plan" the late President Nixon offered on Vietnam, and no change in Afghanistan;
* continuation of Bush's preemption policy;
* a larger military with many more special operations units, plus accelerated spending on "transformation," which in today's defense jargon means creation of greater capability to intervene around the world on short notice;
* a new domestic intelligence agency and a vastly beefed-up homeland security program.
Kerry's defense advisors see much of this as innocuous rhetoric to protect the Democratic candidate's flanks from traditional conservative accusations of being soft on national security. At the same time, it represents a calculated strategy to "keep your head low and win."
In his stump speeches, Kerry stresses a spirited dose of alliances, the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and a return to what he calls an "America that listens and leads again." He roundly criticizes the Bush administration on Iraq, Afghanistan and homeland security. He promises as commander in chief that he will never ask the troops "to fight a war without a plan to win the peace."
