The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum Presidential candidate:

Ah, you got to give Kerry credit. He's a flip-flopper, but he wants to be the best flip-flopper he can be.

Take a look at Kerry's response to Bush's re-deployment plan, as reported by the BBC:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticised President George W Bush's decision to bring back up to 70,000 US troops based abroad.

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Cincinnati, Ohio, he said the US needed to be working in tandem with foreign allies more than ever.

Mr Kerry said he would also fight a "smarter, more effective war on terror".

Nothing wrong with that, of course... unless we take a few minutes to examine some other statements the Senator made. Let's start with something he said way back in 1990, during a Democratic Senatorial candidates' debate in Boston...

"I think we ought to stay on the cutting edge, and I think we ought to be doing an enormous amount more to guarantee research and development. We've seen a horrible shift in the last few years away from civilian R & D into military R & D and R & D that doesn't make sense. But we should not be building a B-2 bomber for 858 million dollars for one bomber. We should not be building more MX missiles to deal with the Soviet Union, and we ought to be making savings in our troops in Europe. We're currently paying for 300,000 troops to be in Germany to save the Germans from the Soviet troops that they're paying to leave then to stay. It doesn't make sense and I think we could help Massachusetts by using that money here."

The transcript actually doesn't make sense in that second to last sentance, but the context is pretty clear. So give Kerry credit -- he was on the cutting edge here, suggesting that with the Soviet threat dissipating, we needed to adapt our strategy. But now, he's gone the other way, which seems odd, since I don't think Germany is in any greater danger today. You could make a case that the Korean re-deployment is a bad idea, as Kerry does... but that position doesn't seem to make sense with regard to the Germans.

But maybe Kerry shifted his thinking on this issue after 9/11, and believes the troops should stay in Germany as part of his "more effective war on terror" (he may also be planning to station troops in France as part of his "more sensitive" war on terror). That could be it... except for this quote from the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate on January 22 of this year...

"The troops of the United States of America are overextended. Their deployments are too long. The families are hurting at home because they lose money from the private sector when they're called up, and they get paid less in the military, and nobody makes it up to them. The fact is if we are going to maintain this level of commitment on a global basis - for the moment we have to, because of what's happened - we need an additional two divisions. One is a combat division, and one is a support division. And that's the responsible thing to do. I've also said, responsibly, that's temporary, because I intend to be a president who goes back to the United Nations, rejoins the community of nations, brings other boots on the ground to help us in the world, and reduces the overall need for deployment of American forces in the globe - and I mean North Korea, Germany and the rest of the world where we can begin to set up a new architecture of participation of other countries."

Well, maybe Kerry changed his mind more recently, after discussing his position with new contributors to his campaign. You know, experts on military matters, like John Edwards and his cadre of trial lawyers. Kerry probably shifted his position months ago, right?

Not quite. Check out this quote from two weeks ago, from an episode of ABC's This Week...

"If the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work, I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just there but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us. But this administration has had very little imagination, enormous sort of ideological fixation and, frankly, took its eye off the war against al Qaeda and the war on terror shifting it to Iraq at enormous cost to the American people and to the legitimacy of the war on terror."

I guess we just need to wait for that expert diplomacy of Kerry to put the plan into action. Of course, maybe he needs some practice, as his speech to the VFW today didn't get everyone's applause, as noted by this picture. The end of the caption tells the tale...

Kerry received a polite if not overwhelmingly positive reaction from the VFW. But there was a clear divide, with scores of veterans sittings with their arms folded while others clapped.

Maybe Kerry needs to tell the veterans a little secret -- that he served in Vietnam. But he may want to leave out the part about Cambodia.

[A big tip o' the hat to Jim Geraghty at the Kerry Spot, who had these quotes lined up and ready to go.]