In the spirit of having voted for it before he voted against it, the flipper has laid claim to a seat on the Last Helicopter. On Meet the Press yesterday Senator John Kerry, who has more flip-flops to his credit than a freshly beached trout, said this:
What I do know is unless you get that conference, unless you combine that with the threat of withdrawal and unless you set a date to move forward, it's not going to happen.
MR. RUSSERT: But by setting a specific date for withdrawal-and you say immediate withdrawal-it is a, a change in your thinking. Now, if you go back to March of '04...
SEN. KERRY: Absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: ...'04, this is what you said. "Kerry says, he is committed to finishing the mission. 'My exit strategy is success,' he says, 'a viable, stable Iraq that can contribute to the stability and peace in the Middle East.'" And then a month later, you offered this.
(Videotape, April 14, 2004):
SEN. KERRY: I think the vast majority of the American people understand that it is important not just to cut and run. And I don't believe in, in a cut-and-run philosophy. I think that would be very damaging to the war on terror, it would be very damaging to the Middle East, it would be very damaging to the longer term interests of the United States.(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: And last January of, of last year, I asked you specifically about...what you are now proposing. Let's watch.
(Videotape, January 30, 2005):
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe there should be a specific timetable of a withdrawal of American troops?
SEN. KERRY: No.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: No. Now you're saying yes.
SEN. KERRY: There's no change. Yes, I am saying yes.
First he says that this is "absolutely" a change in his thinking then he says it's no change. His exit strategy, he tells us in 2004, requires a viable, stable Iraq, but if it looks like that will be tough to achieve then his strategy morphs into a policy of get out now. All of this, he wishes us to understand, is perfectly consistent. Senator Nuance defends his no-change change with these words:
[W]hat I said back then was based on the fact that the presumption of everybody, Tim, was that we were fighting al-Qaeda principally and that we were looking at the, at the, at the war on terror.
What difference does it make whether the people we are fighting are al-Qaeda or Saddam loyalists who will surely destabilize the country as soon as we leave and who will certainly be a threat to the U.S. if they regain control? These people don't wear uniforms. Whether they belong to al-Qaeda or not they're all scum from the same pond, and as long as they are able they will prevent Iraq from becoming the stable state that Kerry said in 2004 was his precondition for withdrawal. The distinction Kerry is trying to draw between al-Qaeda and the Baathist insurgents is one that makes no practical difference.
He then went on to a tout John Murtha's over-the-horizon strategy:
Secondly, the fact is that I have recommended, as Jack Murtha has, and others, that you have an over-the-horizon capacity. You don't withdraw completely from the region, you don't leave it exposed to the Iranians and others. And all of this has to happen with this date and accordslike summit taking place at the same time.
If we withdraw conditions will almost certainly deteriorate, as Russert points out elsewhere in the interview. What, then, is the point of withdrawing in the first place? If we have to go back in it will be infinitely more difficult to pull off both logistically and politically. Kerry knows this. We are no more likely to re-enter Iraq once we leave than we were to re-enter Vietnam once the last helicopter left Saigon. Kerry and the summer soldiers and sunshine warriors of the Democrat party know that to leave will be a defeat for the United States and for Bush. The latter, in their minds, amply justifies the former.