Kerry the Fighter

How “anti-war” is Kerry? A lot of conservatives would like to paint him as a weak-kneed crypto-pacifist who voted against Ronald Reagan’s military build-up and Gulf War I. Plus, the “anti-war” movement seems to be behind Kerry with varying degrees of conviction.

They’re both wrong, at least according to this article from the Telegraph:

One of the more amusing spectacles of these less-than- amusing times is the emergence of a Kerry fan club among European anti-war enthusiasts. The letter-writing campaign of The Guardian to the voters of Clark County, Ohio, is especially silly, but is only one of many examples.

Of course many people support John Kerry for the next president of the United States for a variety of reasons – he is credible when he promises to cut the Federal deficit, for example. But to support him in the hope that he would make American military policy more doveish is absurd. All the evidence is that he will do the exact opposite.

He has declared that he wants to increase the US Army by two divisions, more than the total of Continental Europe’s intervention troops. That too is a credible promise, in part because Iraq has exposed an acute shortage of ground forces and an excess of navy and air force personnel. But beyond any specific policy positions, there is Kerry, the very combative man.

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