Friday, June 25, 2004
Kerry's political pandering isn't presidential
From the RoundTable blog
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Hall is a professor of aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech.
In January 2004, during a Democratic primary debate, candidate Kerry stated that President Bush "has exaggerated the threat of terrorism."
That statement was preceded in recent history by several terrorist attacks that might give a thoughtful person reason to pause before making such a statement. But that was when Kerry was playing to the Democratic base, which believes that America is the most evil nation on Earth.
Now Kerry has a different audience, or perhaps different audiences.
In May 2004, Kerry's line was that President Bush is not taking the terrorist threat seriously enough, and that the possibility of terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction "is the single gravest threat to our security." As part of his effort to meet this threat, he "will launch a global initiative to fully secure the materials needed for nuclear weapons that already exist and sharply limit and control future production."
One presumes that the first step of this initiative will be the continuance of the President's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), established in May 2003, and unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council in April 2004. The PSI is already credited with the elimination of Libya's WMD program.
Kerry has evidently not mentioned the PSI in his national security speeches. Possibly he is unaware of the initiative, but more likely he just doesn't want to call attention to the successes of the current administration.
One might ask: How will a President Kerry "fully secure the materials needed for nuclear weapons"? Does he know where they all are? Will he issue a warrant for the arrest of yellowcake merchants? Will he invade any nation that is in possession of these materials but is uninterested in allowing their possessions to be secured by imperialist Americans? What if France doesn't like Kerry's plan?
And on the home front, Kerry has another nuclear philosophy, one aimed specifically at Nevada's five electoral votes, leading him to promise: "If I'm president, Yucca Mountain will not be a depository." He may be able to keep that promise, but it will require some fancy footwork in a Congress that will not be too different from the body that overrode the Nevada governor's veto of the Yucca Mountain repository.
If a President Kerry refuses to accept the reality of nuclear materials in the United States, one wonders how well he will confront the far more complicated reality of nuclear materials around the globe.
Perhaps a President Kerry will be an effective leader in meeting the threats of terrorism, exaggerated or not. Personally, I believe that, except for his lifelong opposition to the application of American military force for any purpose, Kerry simply says what he believes the audience of the moment would most like to hear. As president, who will that audience be?
Besides the mysterious foreign leaders who wish to see him elected, of course.
