I really think John "I botched the joke" Kerry may be a robot programmed by Richard Nixon to destroy the Democratic party. Why on earth is he apologizing for trying to tell the truth? Everybody says that a politician can’t get elected if he or she speaks honestly about hard issues. But how can we know if no one ever tries it?
If I were John Kerry, I would fight back with the whole truth, and it would go something like this:
Former GOP congressman Mac Collins, who is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall, attacked what I said about how stupid we are to be in Iraq by saying: "The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart." I have no problem with that. But I said if you don't study and don't do your homework, you end up in Iraq. And indeed, that is why we are there. This is a stupid war, and anyone responsible for getting us into it is stupid.
Now, Mr. Collins won’t admit it, but you and I know that joining the Army is pretty much the only way for the poor and uneducated to get out of poverty and get an education in our country anymore. But no one believes it was our troops’ decision. We are in Iraq because our government is stupid. And the rest of us are all just stupid for letting it happen.
Since we’re talking about stupidity, however, I would speculate that the average intelligence in the USA of people who support the war is far lower than those who don't. And there's a very interesting reason as to why this is. Because the war is stupid! For those who did not understand my comments the first time, let me elaborate. We are stupid to be in Iraq! Dumb. Not smart. Being stupid and being in Iraq are synonymous.
Simply stated, it is commonly recognized that favoring brute force versus attempting to use reason to work things out generally reveals a lack of intelligence. And yet, despite all our ideals and so-called values, our country, the one we're supposed to believe in, the good ole USA, out of the blue, totally unprovoked, started bombing innocent people in Iraq. You can lay a story over it but the story doesn’t stick. You can say that it was because there was an immediate threat, but it's been very clearly shown that that was a made up lie.
The reality is that a day came where we just started bombing and invading Iraq, causing a world of pain and suffering, and unleashing untold violence that did not exist until we forced ourselves upon them. And you are not smart, and you did not study or do your homework, if you can't, don't or won't see that. By the way, a country is not just stupid if it denies or ignores this reality, it is in big trouble. So the real discussion to have here is how are we going to come to terms with the fact that our country has caused tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocent people to be killed and to suffer.
So when I say we are stupid to fight the way we are, I refer to the uneducated and thoroughly discredited opinion that the US can and should militarize its way out of the threats our country faces from the Muslim world. Even the US Army now admits that our policy has increased terrorism and hugely increased anti-US sentiment. Stupid is the old paradigm: "Arabs only understand violence." The idea that Bush and his cronies continue to push, that our only hope is to crush them, is racist and dead wrong. It's racist because it implies they can't respond to anything short of the logic of being crushed, and it's wrong because you can't crush a billion people. You can only win them over. Once the USA realizes that our only hope for winning is to win people over, we will stop trying to hurt them and make them cry uncle. They're not going to cry uncle. They're going to get more angry and become more willing to resort to more extreme methods of self-expression that reach more and more into our own world.
So let’s take a lesson: If you don't do your homework and you aren't smart, you get stuck in Iraq! Really! Really stuck! Really really dumb. Thank you.
