The other side of the coin

Yesterday I railed on President Bush and placed some context around my ill-fated vote for John Forbes Kerry. I asserted that he was the best of bad options.

Perhaps I was wrong.

Oxblog's David Adesnik deconstructs Kerry's Sunday performance on Meet The Press and the Gore-like realities faced by the man who once laughably reported for duty.

Here's a bite-sized knockwurst to get you started:

SEN. KERRY: Tim, it’s unconscionable that any young American is dying because Iraqis, five months after an election, are dithering and squabbling and cannot find the ability to compromise and come together in a democracy. Our kids didn’t die for that. Our kids didn’t go over there to do that. Our soldiers have done their job. They’ve given them several elections, three elections. They’ve given them a government, the opportunity to have a government.

Unconscionable? Kerry seems to believe that it was fully conscionable for young Americans to die throughout the first thirty months of the occupation, during which three elections were held. Yet somehow, it has become unconscionable for our servicemen and -women to die now that the formation of a government based on those elections is taking longer than expected. "The opportunity to have a government." For a long time now, it has been plausible to argue that Iraqis had their opportunity and wasted it. But if Kerry believes the three elections were valuable enough to fight for, how can he advocate walking away if Iraqis won't meet his forty-day deadline?The only way we made the elections work -- with more voters and fewer attacks on each polling day -- was by waging an unrelenting war against the insurgents for almost three years. None of the political progress in Iraq has come quickly or easily. How can Kerry insist that now it should?