John Kerry has come out against bringing troops home after he came out for it. Why the straddle? President Bush has announced that we will reduce troop strength in Germany and South Korea in move that has long been anticipated. In his opinion, Bush is going to screw it up. If Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow was Clinton’s campaign theme song, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better is Kerry’s. [Thanks be to Dodd for the links]
Here’s what gets me — Kerry is complaining about withdrawing troops from two countries that have, shall we say, issues with America and with American troops on their soil and are at peace. He’s worried that it raises questions about our commitment. His plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where Iraqis are fighting and dying along side our soldiers, doesn’t raise questions, it answers them about our commitment in the negative. He wants to keep troops in two countries where they aren’t fighting, but remove them from a country where we are fighting our enemies, including al-Qaida. That’s better how?
The case for removing them from Germany is a slam dunk. Germany is threatened only by its runaway welfare state. Of course, when I think back on the proud history of Americans fighting alongside Germans against tyranny, oops, we never have. We fought against German mercenaries in the revolutionary war, against the Kaiser in WWI, against Hitler in WWII, and they declined to fight with us in the Balkans, Kuwait, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Oh, they’ve sent forces after the shooting has stopped — a few thousand here and there. But then we’ll still leave one of our new Brigades behind — a couple thousand troops to fly the flag and reassure the Germans that if the French ever do attack, we’ll at last fire shots in anger together.
We’ll still keep troops in Korea, but reducing the number and moving them to positions where they don’t get annihilated in the first North Korean artillery barrage seems like a good idea to me and increases our freedom of action while reducing tensions with the locals. And isn’t part of Kerry’s foriegn policy to get foreigners to like us again?
Last night I happened to catch Norm Coleman on the Daily Show. He pointed out that debate is good for democracy, but that by and large we don’t have them anymore in this country – instead we have partisan bickering (my words, not his). When Jon asked him why, Norm said because of this and gestured to include the show. Jon made the joke “Comedy Central is responsible?”, but Norm had made his point — if politicians are reduced to brief soundbites on TV, all they can do is bicker.
And that’s all that is going on here. We’ve gotten to the point that politicians will say anything to win, and then say and do whatever it takes to stay in power. This isn’t the fault of the politicians, it’s the fault of us, the American people, for putting up with this kind of politics. We have the ultimate power – to demand that politicians be responsive through the vote, to demand that the media be responsive through the viewership. We just need to use it.
