SwiftVets.com

[fortdixlover]

The following article is referenced in a mailing from Bush-Cheney '04 / GeorgeWBush.com . The themes regarding Kerry are:

1. Flip flop flip flop --
2. If only we were nicer to terrorists --
3. Terrorist attacks against civilians are morally equivalent to the victim country's preventative or retaliatory strikes against the terrorists (there's that dogged inability of Democrats and Leftists to make nuanced and in-context moral comparisons and distinctions again) -- and
4. A failure to comprehend that there is no point in holding negotiations when one party treacherously refuses to abandon terrorism.

This man would be elected POTUS at our peril.

FDL

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/24911.htm

NEW YORK POST

KOSHER KERRY?

By ERIC FETTMANN

July 14, 2004 -- JOHN Kerry, after a slightly rocky start, has had an epiphany of sorts on the Middle East. New "talking points" being privately distributed to pro-Israel groups almost make it seem like Kerry is running for president of AIPAC, the major pro-Israel lobbying group.

In fact, though he'd surely never characterize it this way, Kerry's latest approach to the Middle East conflict is basically that he's just as supportive of Israel as is President Bush.

Of course, Kerry hasn't always felt that way. Last December, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, he accused the president of "jeopardizing the security of Israel [and] encouraging Palestinian extremists" — a description that surely would be met with astonishment in Jerusalem.

Indeed, Kerry "was the most critical of any in his party," of Bush's Middle East efforts, according to Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory.

Now, however, he's solidly endorsing Israel's security fence as "a legitimate right of act of self-defense" and is denouncing Yasser Arafat as a "failed leader" who needs to be replaced.

Not that Kerry has always felt that way about either the fence or Arafat, either.

As The Post's Deborah Orin reported back in March, a 1997 book by Kerry hailed Arafat's "transformation from outlaw to statesman" and cited him as a potential role model for other "terrorist organizations with political agendas."

Orin's column triggered an uproar — which quickly moved Kerry to concede that Arafat had "missed a historic opportunity" and was now an "outlaw." The candidate managed to avoid a debate over whether the PLO leader, who has never even begun to fulfill his personal commitment to confront terrorism, ever qualified for the title "statesman."

As for the security fence, Kerry last year sang an entirely different tune for the Arab-American Institute, to whom he bemoaned "how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli government's decision to build a barrier off the Green Line, cutting deeply into Palestinian areas."

Though calling on Palestinian leaders to "bring an end to the violence against Israelis," he didn't note that the fence is meant to do just that.

"We do not need another barrier to peace," Kerry told the Arab-American audience. "Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israel's security over the long term, they increase hardships to the Palestinian people and they make the process of negotiating en eventual settlement that much harder."

Moreover, he denounced the "endless cycle of violence and reprisals" — and thereby endorsed the idea that terrorist attacks against civilians are morally equivalent to Israeli strikes against groups like Hamas.

No wonder that leading pro-Palestinian activist Jim Zogby widely praised Kerry's remarks at that gathering.

There's more: Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations speech two months later, Kerry seemed to buy in to the discredited notion that Palestinian terrorism is the result of a lack of political progress — and that Israel's refusal to negotiate under fire is counter-productive.

As Kerry put it, "it may be easier to break the stalemate and end the violence fostered by extremists if the end game is the focus, not the steps leading up to it."

So does all this mean John Kerry is weak on Israel? Hardly.

His voting record has been solidly pro-Israel, though his campaign's insistence that the Democratic candidate "has been at the forefront of the fight for Israel's security" is wishful thinking at best.

And the fact that, as the Boston Globe put it, Kerry now "strikes a decidedly stronger pro-Israel position . . . than he did a few months ago" surely will prove reassuring to Jewish voters and other supporters of Israel.

But it hardly fails to reassure those who wonder whether John Kerry's positions swing back and forth like a pendulum, depending on who he's talking to at the moment — and whose votes he finds of immediate importance.

Ultimately, however, the differences between Bush and Kerry on the Middle East are defined not on specifics of the security fence or moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but the larger issue that is central to this campaign: How do threatened nations, like America and Israel, wage a War on Terror?

If he believes, as he suggested to the Council on Foreign Relations, that terrorism will cease if the Palestinians simply are promised a political solution — if he fails to comprehend that there is no point in holding negotiations when one party treacherously refuses to abandon terrorism —then that is far more cause for concern.