What Kerry Won't Tell America

Here's an interesting piece by Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has just taken the ultimate dare of American politics: He's started telling them the truth about Iraq. But only a part of the truth. So he's not going to be heard."At every step of the road he (President George W. Bush) has taken the wrong turn and he has led us in the wrong direction," Kerry said in a major foreign policy speech at New York University this week.The president, had "misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this (Iraq) undertaking."In Iraq, Americans were fighting "a growing insurgency in an ever-widening war." As a result of what was happening there, "The world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans." All absolutely true, and well said, if very belatedly so...

But while all this and a great deal more that's now going on in Iraq is exactly as Kerry told it, he couldn't bring himself to tell it like it really is. And this is that the U.S. is facing failure in Iraq, just as it had to face it more than three decades ago in Vietnam...

In the end, there are only two ways to get out of a quagmire. To dig furiously, in the hope of eventually finding firm ground. Or just to get out.Bush's policy is the first. It won't work since he is, indeed, performing like a recruiting sergeant for Al Qaeda. Kerry's policy, though, is not the second option. It's instead the worst option of all. It's a bit of both. He would start withdrawing troops next year and bring them all out in four years, or by the end of his first term.During the Vietnam War, public opinion turned against the conflict once Americans realized they were sacrificing their lives in a futile mission.This time, although far less confidently than at its start, public opinion still supports the war in Iraq. The reason is that Americans remain convinced that cost of a withdrawal would be an increase in attacks upon them in their own homeland.Until that attitude changes, Kerry cannot tell his voters the truth — that they've lost the war and the sooner they turn their backs on it the better.So he tells them only part of the truth. When he says it, he doesn't sound like he really believes it. Which is why Americans — as yet — don't believe in him.

Read the full article Here.