I can't believe it. John Kerry said something that makes a ton of sense, and that I wholeheartedly agree with (link via Kausfiles):
Sen. John. F. Kerry on Wednesday stressed that the chief interest of the U.S. should be to build a stable Iraq, but not necessarily a democratic one -- a view at odds with President Bush's vision of the troubled country's political future.I have been bitching for years about the fact that US foreign policy has been shackled by our own pro-democracy rhetoric ever since the Wilson administration. I really never though that John Kerry would be the major-party presidential candidate to come out and say it."I have always said from day one that the goal here ... is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told reporters after conducting a town hall meeting at the City College of New York in Harlem. "I can't tell you what it's going to be, but a stable Iraq. And that stability can take several different forms."
Why is it such a sin to admit that American national interests do not always coincide with democracy? How would it have been worse if we has found a reliable Shiite dictator to run Iraq six months ago? But the Bush people, predictably, reacted with phony outrage:
Marc Racicot, the former Montana governor who is chairman of Bush's reelection campaign, said, "There is now even further evidence of the fact that Sen. Kerry continues with an approach that is cynical and defeatist, and it's embraced within a political attack that is seriously undermining our efforts in Iraq and in the war on terror."I say phony, because no one who controls the levers of power in the foreign policy establishment really cares if the guys running the Chiles and South Koreas of the world were democratically elected, but they feel (especially presidents) the need to bloviate about "the people" and "self-determination".
So, huzzah to Kerry for stating an obvious, but historically denied truth - and boo in advance for changing his position two days from now.
Marc
