A fair question

BLS writes: Focus on the main question: Is America under attack from terrorist Islamic sects, and if so, who do you want as Commander in Chief – GEB or JFK – and why?

Yes, America is under attack from terrorist Islamic sects that have declared war against it. I don’t want either George Delano or John Francois as Commander-in-Chief for the following reasons:

GD: refuses to declare which terrorist Islamic sects are responsible, much less confront them with military action. The Islamic world revolution is being funded almost entirely by the House of Saud. The Hezbollah and other active terrorist groups are primarily funded by Iran. GD is not fighting either, indeed, his State Department is actively supporting the Iranian mullahs against popular unrest. After Yasser Arafat killed two American officials, GD only cut off the funding that his administration was providing this terrorist leader. If the war is against terrorist Islamic sects – as we both agree it is/should be – GD has failed completely despite presiding over the conquest of two nations. Taking out one minor enabler, which Husseins certainly was, while ignoring the two major players is hardly indicative of strategic competence – quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

JF: an unknown as C-in-C, although his votes for the various “war resolutions” indicates to me that he will likely follow in GD’s imitation of the ineffectual Israeli two-step. While GD’s Wilsonian nation-building is likely to appeal to him, Kerry is too big a fan of the United Nations to risk upsetting it by invading a third country, barring any further terrorist attacks in the USA. If there is an attack inside the USA, Kerry is as likely to greenlight a third invasion – probably Syria – as Bush. As I mentioned before, Democrats are historically more likely to engage militarily than Republicans, so to tar all Democrats with the antiwar peacenik brush is to focus too much on the bygone Vietnam era. Those under forty of both parties neither know nor care much about Vietnam; our analyses are not colored by it as is the case with the aged mainstream press, which sees Vietnam as the great event of their time.

As is usually the case, the purported differences between the two parties are greatly exaggerated. The first Republican George Bush was the one who did not finish the job against Hussein in 1991. Clinton’s destructive decision to pare down the US military was aided and abetted by a Republican House and Senate.