Can Enough Ketchup Kill The Taste?

September 7 2004
Counterbias.com
Cory M. Marshall

Senator Kerry likes to say that he would have done things differently with respect to prosecuting the war in Iraq .  He has cited that President Bush has badly handled the war and the year of insurgency that has followed in the wake of shock and awe.  But there is something troubling with how Sen. Kerry is handling the Iraq war.

            He has spent a lot of time explaining the subtle difference between giving the president the authority to wage an unnecessary war, an illegal war, and the waging of it.  What is problematic is that, while he doesn’t approve of how the war was conducted, he doesn’t express much concern for the causus belli, the reason for the war.  In the spirit of Field of Dreams, the “if you build it, they will come” mentality, the Iraq war was a supply-side war, a war that had to be thunderously and relentlessly sold, reflecting all that is disdainful of the sales profession, to a public that was used to trusting and lacked the best information on the matter.  There is very little difference between how the leading presidential contenders accepted the grounds for war.

            There is no doubt that the war had been whooped up over illusory WMDs, using the very same tactics of fear and agreement that has served many a life agent very well.  And thus a harangued public eventually bought into the need for war to pre-empt Saddam Hussein from harming his neighbours with all sorts of perfidious weaponry that the US had given him and the UN had asserted had been destroyed.  With the destruction of the weapons and the late-coming cooperation that Mr. Hussein was giving through the decommissioning of the al Samoud missiles, the causus belli that the world was given was being destroyed. 

            It would be refreshing to hear Senator Kerry taking the president to task for so clearly betraying their country and our world by running rough shod over the demands of the people the world over in order to get the supply of war to the market and foist it on, well, everyone.  But the senator seems to march forward questioning every aspect of the war yet not its legitimacy.  It is in the arena of justifying the war where Mr. Bush’s throat is left exposed but the heroic fighting spirit of the democratic challenger lacks the will to strike.

            It would seem akin to the spirit that permeates the ardent capital punisher who is devastated by a stay in an execution.  It isn’t about the condemned, his or her innocence or guilt; it’s about the fallibility of the system, and the system cannot be fallible for this type of person.  The authority of the state and the system must prevail, properly or improperly, because it solidifies that worldview, it is the glue that holds many people together.  Perhaps, the senator is also one of those people.

            This would explain why there is so little, if any, mention made of the various little pit stops and potholes on the road to war.  There is no mention of the faulty processes by which intelligence was vetted, or slanted, only mention of how badly Mr. Bush has wielded the power that he had coerced from congress in the run up to the mid-term elections of 2002.  Senator Kerry seems to steam roll past the lack of legitimacy, and that is the problem.

            If he could simply state that “we should never have gone there, but now that we are there…”, then the world that waits with bated breath wouldn’t have to be treated to the maddening shades of innuendo and explanations of nuanced thinking, when the American people really have no tools to deal with nuance.  He won’t state that though, perhaps because of a need for the system to prevail, or perhaps because he is one of those who cannot countenance a revolution in political thought, rather looking back through history for stability and afraid of what a schism of this nature would mean for previously much-vaunted institutions.  And people say he is too liberal.

            Until the second of November we will continued to be treated to how the president’s foreign policy is unfolding like a crumpled and soggy piece of paper but never why.  We will hear about the outcome but the ingredients will go without scrutiny, when it was in the ingredients that the dish was spoiled.  As such, there is a foul aroma emanating from the kitchens of both campaigns with the Bush camp in awe of the power of the state as a “means”, while one discerns a reverence for the state as an “end” in the Kerry camp.

            Why is it so hard for Senator Kerry to say that the difference between the way Mr. Bush has handled Iraq and how he, the senator, would have handled it is that Mr. Kerry would not have gone?  The effect of this inability to speak these or similar words seems to be making the up-coming election little more than an opportunity to gamble.