Reply #126: Kerry failed when his leadership was needed the most [View All]

[Martin Eden]

We needed John Kerry to stand up for the Constitution and for the American People by demanding that the decision to go to war be kept in the hands of Congress.

We needed a leader who understood the agenda of Bush and the neocons, that they could not be trusted, and that giving them the power to invade Iraq at their discretion was going to result in disaster.

If John Kerry actually put his trust in this administration, he is a fool.

Suspecting that Saddam had likely resumed his WMD programs after the inspectors left in 1998 is reasonable, but waging an illegal preventive war without solid evidence is not. Furthermore, anyone who understood Saddam knew he wouldn't commit suicide by attacking the US and that Islamic terrorists were his enemies not his allies.

John Kerry is a very intelligent and informed man, and I doubt he trusted Bush or believed Saddam posed a "grave and gathering" threat. He is an ambitious politician who had to consider the political consequences of his stand on these issues.

In my opinion, if he had led the fight against the IWR resolution on the basis of the Constitutional responsibilities of Congress in matters of war, on the prudence of not jumping into the quagmire of the "bitterly hostile land" that gave Bush 41 pause, and if he pushed for a compromise resolution that would have put the inspectors back in Iraq without giving Bush carte blanche -- John Kerry would have won the 2004 election and would be president right now (even if he failed to pass a compromise IWR).

So as a politician, John Kerry miscalculated big time.

But even worse, he failed to do the right thing as a public servant.

Nevertheless, I worked for his campaign in 2004 because getting Bush out of the White House was absolutely imperative and Kerry was the only viable alternative.

Indications are that John Kerry will run for president again in 2008. I'd probably take him over Hillary, but what a sad testament to the lack of leadership in the Democratic Party that would be.