GORDON UPDATE

I mentioned earlier today that Professor Michael Gordon, of PoliSci129 here at ucsb, had sent to his students a National Review article on Kerry's hawkish stance on Iraq in 1997.

A student responded to this addition, saying:

What on earth does a 7 year old speech have to do with the present. If the current intelligence was wrong or subject of a little english, how does that affect Kerry's electability....unless it is used as a smear.

I would have preferred if the emailer broght up the fact that the UN inspection regime was getting lots of shit from Saddam at the time. Anyway, maybe Gordon will make that distinction in his response:

No, no smear: I actually like Kerry. That has nothing to do with the contradiction in his behavior: he urged unilateral war if need be in 1997, and voted for the war Bush waged, only to waffle since then to court Democratic voters. The connection is spelled out in my commentary. If, oppositely, Bush were found by David Kay to have fudged the WMD figures, I would favor impeachment. Simply because you support a policy or a candidate or a president doesn’t remove the obligation to apply universal criteria, political or moral, in judging the appropriateness of conduct.

You might ponder why, if Saddam was a threat warranting unilateral war 7 years ago , he was less a danger last year? Actually, Bush didn’t wage a unilateral war, and the US and the UK tried for six months to get UN Security Council support for the war. If I understood Kerry’s position 7 years ago, he wouldn’t have wasted much time, if any, trying to get that support.

Oh well, a bit too much to hope for. I'll have to email him.