Mistakism
I thought he was done running for president and was going to devote all his energy to getting us out of this damned war. That hasn’t exactly worked out. In fact, it’s going very badly. So John Kerry is fighting the Vietnam War and the 2004 presidential campaign again. That is, the Vietnam War and the 2004 presidential campaign as showcases for John Kerry’s vanity.
Some people think this ridiculous demand … actual documentation … is an unfair moving of the goal post. Of course, some people think John Kerry should be president now.
There’s the disparagement of American soldiers in front of the cameras, the throwing of someone else’s medals. The decades of unremarkable backbenchwarming. But I found out everything I needed to know about John Kerry’s leadership qualifications when I learned that, four months into his combat command, having received three minor wounds, none of which required hospitalization, he took a technical out. Some people like to whack Bush for going into the Air National Guard, Cheney, Romney, Giuliani and Clinton for their various stratagems of Vietnam War avoidance. You can say what you like about those situations, but none of them can be accused of, having sworn to serve and accepted command, walking away from men who had been placed in their charge in combat.
Or then, having answered his own question with his feet, having the gall to ask, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Who was the last man, anyway?
Joyner at OTB: Swiftboatsmanship was a mistake. Bringing it up again three years later … rather odd.
DRJ at Patterico: Setting material terms ain’t reneging. Kerry must have at lkeast one point he thnks he can win, use as a hammer to discount the rest. Pickens vs. Kerry should be fun.
Prior on mistakism:
By JULES CRITTENDEN
19 November 2006
Boston Herald
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” John Kerry once famously asked.
His question resonated in the Vietnam-era 1970s, when a war of communist expansion had come to be viewed as a liberation struggle, and America’s involvement on the supposed wrong side of that was seen as a colossal, deadly mistake. It has resonated again today, as the war in Iraq came to be viewed by some parties as one more great big American mistake.
The fact is in war, there are mistakes, and men die because of them. These are not the kind of mistakes Kerry was refering to, or that the anti-war faction talks about today. These are missteps in combat or actions based on poor information or judgment, and they are tragic.
Sometimes they are misguided tactics or strategies. These mistakes are an unavoidable part of the terrible business of war, and correcting them is part of the process of achieving goals of national interest and national defense . . . goals that in Iraq are of global interest and global defense.
Then there is the other kind of mistake. When with good intentions you have embarked on a necessary fight, you decide you want to back out because it has gotten ugly. When, for example, you discover that in war people die, and death is tragic. When, because war is a complex thing, the nature of the threat shifts or becomes more challenging, and it is frustrating.
In war, you accomplish your goal, which is winning, or you lose, or you arrive at a stalemate and await further developments. Exiting, without having won or achieved stalemate, is losing. When you face inferior forces and a further threat from their emboldened allies, exiting is also a mistake.
The issue is especially relevant today, in the wake of the Democratic win in congressional elections, and early signs – Rumsfeld’s replacement and the signals from the Iraq Study Group – that President Bush himself might be looking for the door.
But there are several reasons to be hopeful that the United States and its allies do not want to turn Iraq into a mistake.
Last Wednesday, Gen. John Abizaid told Congress he wants to maintain troop levels in Iraq and boost the training of Iraqi forces. There has been strong political pressure to give the commanders what they need. Then news reports suggested the Bush administration is getting ready to push another 20,000 troops into Baghdad to tackle the militias and quell sectarian violence. This is good news.
A recent study of troop levels and U.S. and Iraqi deaths found that when the number of troops has gone up, the number of deaths has come down. The Iraqi people need to know we are committed to them, and their government must be discouraged from an increasingly destructive sectarian path.
Thursday, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s choice for majority leader, anti-war zealot John Murtha, was rejected in favor of the more moderate Steny Hoyer. Not only did the party reject the politics of outright abandonment, it also administered a spanking to Pelosi that takes the shine off her electoral “thumpin’ ” of Bush.
Friday, Tony Blair said al-Qaeda, Iraq’s Sunni insurgents, and its Iranian-backed Shiite militias have turned Iraq into a “disaster.” But our most stalwart ally added, “We are not walking away.”
Which brings us back to Kerry’s infamous question. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
The answer is, you don’t. It would be abhorrent to do so. You ask men and women to offer themselves for a worthy cause, and you honor the sacrifices they make by fighting that cause to a successful conclusion.
The irony is, like Kerry’s call 35 years ago, today’s calls for a quick exit from Iraq are in fact calls to create a mistake, which men and women will then be asked to die for.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:10 am Comments (20) on Saturday, November 17, 2007
20 Responses to “Mistakism”
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November 17th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Kerry’s kind of reminding me of Dan Rather… :)
November 17th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I don’t see any problems with the demand for Kerry to provide documentation. It’s not like he hasn’t been asked for that before.
November 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
3 Purple Hearts. Not a day in the hospital.
I suppose it could happen, but many of us would like to see how. We’d also like to see how his service was officially characterized, because that would mean a lot. Also, what kind of officer leaves the people he has taken an oath to lead early and comes home and bad mouths them? I was a Naval Officer and I know there are bad ones, but they are not q
November 17th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
aw shoot, fat fingered….
I was a Naval Officer and I know there are bad ones, but they are not qualified to be President either.
November 17th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
The US Army is short 35,000 majors and captains even though it offers $35,000 bonuses to those who re-up these days. It has lowered it’s recruitment standards time and again over the last four years even with other huge bonuses for enlisted. Seems a lot of soldiers don’t want to die for the latest mistake.
November 17th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
markg8 says: Seems a lot of soldiers don’t want to die for the latest mistake.
It equally “seems” that a lot of men and women see no future in going over to fight a war when many of the enemy hold office in the U.S. Congress. Who wants to be the one to die because the leader of the Senate stood up in front of the world and declaresd the war lost, giving the enemy cause to think it is winning and all that is required is to up the body count? Or whose efforts will mean nothing regardless of their success because there are those who hold the purse strings are intent on “slow-bleeding” them by pulling the funding? Or whose own people in the media will spend weeks and column inches putting any story on the front page that reflects negatively on the military? Or whose own leadership has become so besotted with political correctness that it burdens the troops with self-sacrificial rules of engagement and with lawyers making critical decisions in the middle of combat?
You see, mikeg8, I was able to come up with several different alternative theories besides yours. I’m sure that each of these reasons, along with many not noted, speaks for someone. Don’t assume that everybody else thinks like you do,or that your so-called proof that “soldiers don’t want to die for the latest mistake” means that the mistake is fighting the war in the first place.
November 17th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Kerry is an ass.
November 17th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
That’s quite an assertion, Markg8, and doesn’t jive with things I’ve read about military enlistments. Perhaps you could provide a link that isn’t DailyKos.
Kerry’s trying to rehabilitate his reputation, and of course, he’s doing it in his usual ham-handed way, which will probably end in disaster for him. If he really cared about the Paralyzed Veterans of America, he’d go ahead and donate a million dollars of Teresa’s money anyway, without tying it to some petulant effort to “end swiftboating”.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Yes. Kerry taking a stab at rehabilitating his “swift boat” image, 3 years after the debacle, is almost too pathetic for words.
It does remind you of Dan Rather’s own latest move.
Each time these guys bring this stuff up, they remind us again of their own deep personality flaws.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Speaking of which, I read that Valerie Plame wants Geo. Clooney to direct a movie of her life with Michael Douglas playing hubby Joe Wilson.
Can’t any of these people ever just go off quietly into the night ?
Do we have to have them perpetually in our faces ad nauseam ?
(rant off)
November 17th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
tanstaafl, sounds like another Clooney blockbuster (not).
November 17th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
“…he’d go ahead and donate a million dollars of Teresa’s money anyway, without tying it to some petulant effort to “end swiftboating”.
Another big lib who has access to the better part of a billion dollars who’s only solution to any problem is to have us thousandaires pay for it.
And why would he donate to paralyzed vets? He only craps on our vets: raped women, cut off ears, Jenghis Khan, too stupid to stay out of Iraq, etc.
Maybe he would donate Teraza’s ketchup money to paralyzed Viet Cong vets.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
>>So John Kerry is fighting the Vietnam War and the 2004 presidential campaign again. >Some people think this ridiculous demand … actual documentation … is an unfair moving of the goal post.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Uhm, it was Pickens who made the offer. And now it’s Kerry’s fault for accepting. Life in Oppositeland.
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>>Some people think this ridiculous demand … actual documentation … is an unfair moving of the goal post.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Of course it’s a ridiculous demand, and of course it’s moving the goal post.
They’re not demanding “actual documentation” of the charge which Kerry would be refuting, but information that is completely irrelevant to the matter. And refusing to participate unless he obliges.
Either Kerry proves his point or he doesn’t. They’re not entitled to name the evidence required beforehand, much less information with no bearing on the issue.
Pickens also moved the goal posts in another major way:
His initial offer was for anyone who could prove wrong ANYTHING the SBVT charged.
Now he’s only willing to defend their ADS … in other words, their opinions.
Why is he so unwilling to defend their book? Or their news releases, articles and op ed pieces, and media interviews?
Could it just be…because it’s easy Pickens?
(Sorry for the multiple posts … program kept cutting it off.)
November 18th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Vanguard of the Commentariat Says:
Another big lib who has access to the better part of a billion dollars who’s only solution to any problem is to have us thousandaires pay for it.
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Wow, Pickens is only a “thousandaires”?
Of course he’s the one who made the offer. God forbid someone ask that the money go to a good cause.
November 18th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
“God forbid someone ask that the money go to a good cause.”
Kerry supporter invokes “God”?
Better work on that nuance stuff zooz.
November 18th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Better work on that snappy retort stuff, Van.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
What is wrong with you people ?
John Kerry got three small wounds that never wound him up in hospital overnight, used “the system” to beat feet from v
November 18th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Vietnam, came home and acted all pretentious bluestocking schoolboy in testimony before the US Senate, eventually married TereZa who controls the $ in the Heniz Foundation (further emasculating John) and has accomplished little beyond trying to make himself appear more than he is or could ever be.
There is more ?