Bollettino

The man who wasn't there


John Kerry has decided to run a unique campaign. So far, he is running as either “None of the Above” or “Me too, and double it!”

Here we have a perfect Kodak moment: Bush, receiving a warning that any sane executive would take seriously, retiring to his ranch to rest on his tax cutting laurels in August, 2001. Did the man even alert his own secretary of treasury that the FBI suspected hijackers were present in the U.S.? No, he didn’t. There is a comfortable myth that is starting to fall apart, which says that nineteen hijackers succeeding in three different venues is one of those ‘can’t stop it’ kind of things. That it is an unusual, indeed, unique act of terrorism is swept under the rug. The most startling thing about the hijacking is less the first plane that slammed into the WTC. It is that the second plane did. The second plane screamed – system-wide collapse.

Kerry’s response to this has been: no comment.

Kerry’s response to Iraq is even worse. It is to “internationalize’ the situation and send in more U.S. troops. And he wants me to vote for this? Kerry hasn’t commented about the vital element in the whole Iraq fiasco – the Iraqis. As in, he has never criticized the reliance on Chalabi, he has never said that we should work more with al Sistani, he’s made no comment about our surprising, or sinister, hesitation in really putting in place representative institutions, he’s said nothing about the rather criminal use of the criminal courts to blackmail Sadr that we know was undertaken by the CPA (which, incidentally, discredits the one thing that is truly necessary for democracy in Iraq – an independent judiciary. One that is wholly subservient to executive power is one that is wholly corrupt. Martial law operates not only to exert direct pressure on the percieved enemies of the state, but to preserve the integrity of the court. A court that issues murder warrants selectively for an occupying power is doomed to Iraqi contempt). His view of Iraq, if he is serious, will get us ever deeper into an impossible situation. Kerry battle cry is that of a man who has served on way too many committees – process, and more process. Meanwhile, the world ends.

John Kennedy once wrote a book, Why England Slept, about the period before WWII. We are experiencing something unique – a whole nation is sleeping during the war. Call it: Why America can’t wake up. And if Kerry keeps sleepwalking through this election, he will surely lose people like me.