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John Kerry ‘Swiftboats' The Democrats Wynton C. Hall Senator John Kerry just lit a fuse.
Speaking to a group of college students, Kerry enlightened young listeners and imparted this pearl of wisdom: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well . . . If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senator John McCain have both condemned the comments as belittling to the 2.4 million men and women of our Armed Forces. The White House has blasted the comments as "insulting. "
Others are likely to join the growing chorus as well. The military bloggers are already in Def Con 1. Story Continues Below
The snide, hyper-elitism dripping from Kerry's words is arresting. But swirling beneath the surface of his comments is something deeper, something conservative critics have long identified and attacked among those they say belong to the "Blame America First" crowd, as former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick so artfully once put it.
And that is this: What, if anything, will liberals fight for? What threat, if any, would be worthy of sacrificing one's educated comfort in order to use aggressive, American military power?
That Democrats would have as their presidential candidate a man who belittles and demeans our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, is bad for America. But it's hardly surprising. Indeed, it calls to mind the outrageous comments by Kerry's colleague, Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who just last year equated those same "uneducated troops" as behaving akin to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."
Just days before Democrats were poised to have a shot at winning the House and Senate, Karl Rove and Team GOP must be understandably overjoyed that Mr. Kerry chose now to remind voters of the disdain he and many in his party have for those who would use aggressive force to defend America from her enemies.
But beyond the electoral implications, Democrats must consider what Kerry and Durbin's words mean for their party's vision for the future should they capture power.
Thankfully, 2.4 million men and women stand ready to deal with the consequences. Wynton C. Hall is a visiting fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the coauthor, with the late Caspar Weinberger, of Home of the Brave: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror.
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