Kerry echoes Dean talking point on Israel/Lebanon conflict: This wouldn’t have happened had he been president

These guys just never cease to amaze me. Via the Detroit News (emphasis added):

U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D- Mass., who was in town Sunday to help Gov. Jennifer Granholm campaign for her re-election bid, took time to take a jab at the Bush administration for its lack of leadership in the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.

“If I was president, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Kerry during a noon stop at Honest John’s bar and grill in Detroit’s Cass Corridor.

Bush has been so concentrated on the war in Iraq that other Middle East tension arose as a result, he said.

“The president has been so absent on diplomacy when it comes to issues affecting the Middle East,” Kerry said. “We’re going to have a lot of ground to make up (in 2008) because of it.”

[…]

Hezbollah guerillas should have been targeted with other terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban, which operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kerry said. However, Bush, has focused military strength on Iraq.

“This is about American security and Bush has failed. He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq.…We have to destroy Hezbollah,” he said.

Tough talk from a guy who didn’t sound so tough in 2004. John Hawkins writes in response:

So, the Israeli attack on Hezbollah wouldn’t have happened if Kerry were President? Does that mean he would have stopped Hezbollah from kidnapping those Israeli soldiers and firing those rockets or that he would have prevented Israel from responding?

Maybe he means that the United States should have destroyed Hezbollah instead of the Israelis? So, is he saying that he thinks we should have declared war on Lebanon and sent in American troops? From our point of view, isn’t it better to have the Israelis fighting Hezbollah than us?

Whatever the case may be, I certainly don’t remember Kerry promising to go to war against Hezbollah or their backers in Iran and Syria when he was running for office in 2004. Do you? So, perhaps he was thinking of something else. Maybe he would have made Hezbollah face a fearsome “global test” and they would have crumbled after getting a harshly worded letter signed both by Kofi Annan AND the French! That could be the solution he was considering.

Nail, meet hammer.

Essentially what Kerry is saying is that we should have invaded Lebanon. If anyone believes he would have actually carried through with it, I’ve got beachfront in South Dakota to sell you. How ironic that he was speaking at a bar and grilled named “Honest John’s” when he made these statements. I don’t think he was being very honest. This is mere tough talk and nothing more, and if you read between the lines, you’ll see he was echoing a talking point issued by Howard Dean a week ago on this very subject:

“If you think what’s going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn’t, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn’t get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

LOL yes – that’s the modern day Democratic solution: attempting diplomacy with terrorist groups like Hezbollah, without alerting them to the consequences of their failure to hold up their end to whatever ‘deal’ a Democratic administration would strike with them.

Here’s the latest on the Israel/Hezbollah conflict.

Read more via Wizbang, Right Wing Nuthouse, Blogs For Bush, Texas Rainmaker, Don Surber, RightWinged.com, Below the Beltway, Pundit Guy

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Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on mainstream media bias and the culture wars.

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