I don't know about you, but it seems like campaign fever is sweeping through Happy Valley. Since the semester began, this page has been full of columns, letters and cartoons bashing President Bush, hailing Senator Kerry and vice versa with some even pleading "Enough already!"
And it looks like the Kerry-Edwards buttons are becoming more chic than Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong yellow bracelets.
But aside from the political fanfare this election is engendering here at Penn State, there are some hugely consequential matters at stake. The most important, in my opinion, is the direction in which the Bush administration has taken our foreign policy after September 11. As Sen. Kerry said in a speech at New York University last week, "We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made and the choices I would make to fight and win the war on terror."
Well then let's have one, Senator! Or, as the president recently asked, should we wait until you're done debating with yourself the merits of the Iraq war? OK, well given that your Iraq policy pronouncements flutter like the fall leaves every which way, for the sake of this argument, let's stick with your most recent statements about Iraq.
One of the primary themes of your campaign has been the slogan "Stronger at Home, Respected in the World." Specifically speaking about Iraq, you said at NYU, "We must make Iraq the world's responsibility." So by reaching out our allies, in your words, we can "share the burden" of pacifying and reconstructing Iraq and getting them on their way to free and fair elections. On paper, the plan looks to be the right tonic for the seemingly chaotic scene in Iraq.
But the reality is that the "world" you speak of, sir, does not want any responsibility whatsoever in Iraq. Let's be honest here; the "world" you're talking about really only includes the likes of French president Jacques Chirac, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. I'm sure you know that Messrs. Chirac and Schroeder wouldn't send troops to Iraq even if their publics wanted them to do so (which if that was true, Hell would have frozen over). Chirac has led the effort to stonewall NATO's attempt to train the new Iraqi armed forces, and last December, in response to former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson's plea for - at the time - much needed helicopters in Afghanistan, Chirac's defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, snidely responded, "I have a helicopter for you, Lord Robertson. I will send you a plastic model of one for Christmas." Only the French.
Schröder, like a dutiful son, has dully followed the lead of his French counterpart, while Kofi Annan can now count two genocides (Rwanda in 1994 and Sudan this year) he hasn't found worthy enough to send in the UN "blue helmets" to quell the violence. You think Iraq is on his priority list? Doubtful. I hope you see a pattern developing here Senator!
Mr. Kerry, you are also going to have to fess up to the notion that you believe our allies fighting alongside our own troops are somehow part of a "fraudulent" coalition that was "coerced and bribed" by Pres. Bush.
Somehow, I don't think, despite the anti-war sentiments they face at home, Tony Blair (UK), John Howard (Australia), Aleksander Kwasniewski (Poland), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Junichiro Koizumi (Japan), Vaclav Klaus (Czech Republic), and Jan Peter Balkenende (the Netherlands), among the 24 other world leaders not mentioned here, consider themselves part of some hackneyed, "fraudulent coalition" that was "bribed and coerced" by President Bush.
And I'll bet you their troops don't think so either. But besides all that, the biggest blunder - to put it nicely - you've made so far (besides your vote against the $87 billion supplemental for the troops), was your inconspicuous absence from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's address to Congress last week.
I'm really dumbfounded as to why you couldn't set the campaign aside for a day, and join the rest of your colleagues in the House and Senate in a show of resolve and appreciation for probably America's most important ally in the war on terror, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Maybe even a photo-op could have been arranged following Allawi's speech, which would have expressed a bipartisan solidarity with the embattled Iraqi leader and would have surely given you some much needed credibility on the Iraq issue. But instead you put politics ahead of national priorities. And how on God's green earth do you explain your top campaign aide Joe Lockhart's awful snipe to the Los Angeles Times? Speaking of Allawi, the former Clinton press secretary said, "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."
As former Leftist-turned-hawk Christopher Hitchens put it, "Here is the only [Middle East] regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer."
Maybe tonight when you have that "real debate" with the president, you'll clarify some of these statements for us and the rest of world.
We're all ears.
