Leaders of "Entire Arab World" for John Kerry

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXI

That's what The Guardian, a British publication, says today (emphasis in original):

Shortly before Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, flew to Washington for talks with George Bush last month, a journalist asked if he was going to say goodbye to the president ahead of the US elections in November. Mr Schröder's adviser grinned broadly before composing his face into a frown. "I won't speculate on that," he said.

Although Mr Schröder deliberately avoided the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, during his two-day trip to the US, there is little doubt that a Kerry victory would provoke rejoicing inside Germany's government, as it would in many other parts of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America.

This week Mr Kerry claimed that foreign leaders had told him they could not publicly offer him their support but added: "You've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy." ....

Mr Schröder's spokesman last night denied he was one of the "foreign leaders" who had sent a secret message of support to Mr Kerry.

Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of Royal Institute for International Affairs, in London, said yesterday he doubted if any head of government had been unwise enough to say in private to Mr Kerry that they wanted him to win and thought it more likely that the "foreign leaders" to whom the Democratic candidate referred to were foreign secretaries or heads of parliamentary delegations.

He said there was a difference between how a second Bush presidency was perceived by the "masses" — who wanted shot of Mr Bush in the belief there would be a return to a golden age — and the elite — who were not convinced there ever had been a golden age and leaned towards "better the devil you know"....

How the world lines up

How foreign leaders are believed to view the rivals:

For Kerry
Germany
France
Entire Arab world
Most of Latin America

Neutral/unknown
Britain
Russia
Israel
Iraq

For Bush
Spain
Italy
Pakistan
Azerbaijan
Eritrea
Uzbekistan

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/10/04 07:09:26 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.

"Defending America"

A British visitor likes what he sees.

Benedict Rogers writes the latest Guest Column available on-line at Crisis Magazine:

.... For all its faults, America is not just a great nation but a good nation. While there are aspects of American society that are immoral, at its heart it has good foundations. And while some Americans may have strayed from those foundations — the defense of freedom and the love of God — many have not. Europe, however, has willfully eroded its own foundations, as shown in the Godless European Constitution now being debated. There is a growing divide between America and Europe, as Europe sinks into arrogant decadence, secularism, apathy, and appeasement.

Britain is not immune from the European moral decline, but it has not yet gone all the way. Tony Blair’s allegiance to America, and the leadership he demonstrated during the war in Iraq, show that he at least has not forgotten our values. He is right to try as much as possible to bridge the Euro-American gap and to work with our European partners. But if it comes to the crunch, we should know who our true friends are. It is reassuring to know that the balance of military might in the world is in the hands of a nation that, by and large, will use that might to free people, not to oppress them. Why do the protestors devote so much energy to demonstrating against Bush and not against the dictators of the world? Next time the demonstrators are out on the streets in London shouting anti-American slogans, I plan to go out and stand opposite them holding a placard with a contrary message: that America is a good nation we should be glad to call our best friend.

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/10/04 05:58:22 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Is John Kerry "Sexing Up" His Foreign-Leader Connections?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXX

Reuters reports on some... interesting... remarks by the Democratic Nominee Presumptive, at a fund-raising event in Ft. Lauderdale, Mar. 8 (quoted ellipses in original). After that, a WaTi article.

Democratic White House candidate John Kerry predicted on Monday Republicans would try to "tear down" his character and said some foreign leaders had told him they hoped he would beat President Bush.

The four-term Massachusetts senator and decorated Vietnam War veteran told supporters at a fund-raiser in Fort Lauderdale that he expected a tough eight-month campaign in which Republicans would make an effort to malign he and his wife, outspoken heiress and philanthropist Teresa Heinz Kerry.

"I am convinced that we have the ability to win this race," he said. "It's going to be hard fought, they're going to do everything possible to tear down my character personally (and) Teresa. That's the way they operate."

Kerry cited how Republicans turned on one of their own in 2000, when Arizona Sen. John McCain, another decorated Vietnam War veteran who survived six years as a prisoner of war, ran against Bush for the party's nomination.

"They even tried to challenge John McCain's tenure as a prisoner for six years... they tried to besmirch his character, so I expect everything," he said.

Bush and his Republican allies have already tried to portray the Yale-educated son of a diplomat as a Northeastern liberal elitist, a chronic waffler and a fence-sitter.

Kerry rejected what he has called the old style politics of divisiveness and said he would not let the finger-pointing distract from the issues of jobs, health care, the economy and national security.

"I'm a fighter," he said. "And I'm ready for it, and I'm not going to let them change the subject. The subject is America, the oneness... our kids, our future, all of the issues that are staring us in the face."

CITES ENCOURAGEMENT FROM UNNAMED LEADERS

Without naming anybody, Kerry said he had received words of encouragement from leaders abroad who were eager to see him defeat Bush on Nov. 2.

"I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that," he said.

Kerry has challenged Bush on almost all aspects of foreign policy, from Iraq, where he accuses the administration of going to war as a first resort not a last, to Haiti, where he said he would have sent an international force to support ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

On a Southern swing through four states — Mississippi, Florida, Texas and Louisiana — that hold nominating contests on Tuesday, Kerry blamed Bush for America's "torn and tattered" international ties over Iraq and broken promises on jobs, health care, education and the environment.

After winning nine out of a possible 10 states last week, Kerry drove his only major competitor, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, out of the race and clinched the nomination.

In an effort to match Bush's $100 million campaign war chest, Kerry is seeking to unify the fund-raisers who originally backed Edwards, one-time Democratic front-runner Howard Dean and other former opponents.

He said he had spoken to Dean several times and expects to meet with the former Vermont governor later this week in Washington.

Kerry told his supporters he and Edwards, frequently mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate, "became good friends" during the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Later, at a town hall meeting in Hollywood, Kerry vowed not to privatize the Social Security retirement system nor to cut benefits. He slammed the Medicare prescription drug bill as a "Bush boondoggle" for the pharmaceutical companies.

Florida, site of the bitterly contested 2000 recount that gave Bush the presidency, ranks No. 1 among states in population aged 65 or over, according to the U.S. Census.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

WaTi's editor Tony Blankley follows up today:

Last weekend, John Kerry, while meeting with a small group of Florida contributors, claimed that: "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that." The candidate refused to identify the names of these leaders. I confess, I don't quite know what to make of this claim.

While it is certainly plausible that many foreigners don't like the president of the United States, my first question is whether Mr. Kerry is telling the truth. When, exactly, did he meet with these foreign leaders? Note that he doesn't merely say he talked with them (by telephone.) He claims he "met" them and "they looked at" him while they were saying these things.

Senator Kerry has been on public view almost every day since he started running for president last year (except for the period of his hospitalization, when he obviously could not have been traveling around the world). I don't recall seeing him in Europe, the Middle East or on other foreign travel during that period. (His campaign office wouldn't respond to my inquiry for a record of his foreign travel in the last year.) Nor do I recall seeing or reading about foreign heads of state meeting with Sen. Kerry when they visited Washington during the last many months.

In the absence of any public evidence that he has met with several foreign leaders recently, the burden of proof should be on Sen. Kerry to prove that he didn't just make up this little story that he told a small group of Florida contributors — with one telltale reporter present. George W. Bush was pressured to provide his dental records to prove he had attended the Alabama National Guard in 1973. (He provided them, and he did attend.) It only seems fair to pressure Sen. Kerry to provide his passport or other documents for 2003 to prove he really met with these "foreign leaders" either here or abroad.

But beyond whether or not John Kerry lied about this convenient little anecdote, the fact that he thought it was a useful story to publicly recount certainly tells us something about how he views America and the world....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/10/04 05:41:15 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.

New Member of St. Blog's

Fidelis.

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/10/04 07:34:25 AM
Categorized as Other.

A Look at One of the World's Great Hypocrites

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXIX

The filthy-beyond-filthy rich anti-capitalist capitalist. (Emphasis and quoted ellipses and brackets in original.)

"I have made rejection of the Bush doctrine the central project of my life," announced George Soros in January. "I am determined to do what I can," he added, to assure that President Bush is not re-elected.

Coming from someone else, such statements might be written off as delusional, but Mr. Soros is a man with a record of achieving outsized goals. A financier who began with a stake of a few thousand dollars, he traded and speculated his way to a fortune of many billions, making him one of the world's richest men. Then he turned to philanthropy, an enterprise he undertook with so much largesse and so much panache that he quickly won a place for himself alongside the likes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller in the pantheon of legendary donors.

Mr. Soros has declared his intent to devote similar energy and single-mindedness to his new "project." Campaign-finance regulations may place stringent limits on donations to candidates — and now, with the McCain-Feingold law, to political parties as well — but they still allow unlimited donations to so-called independent political committees (though the Federal Election Commission is mulling new regulations on these groups, also known as 527s). According to reports last November, Mr. Soros had already pledged $18 million to three liberal anti-Bush groups of this kind, announcing that "If necessary, I would give more." As he sees it, "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

This impassioned crusade may come as a surprise to some. Mr. Soros's fame rests not on his political commitments, after all, but on his achievements as "the world's greatest money manager" (a title bestowed on him by Institutional Investor magazine) and as the open-handed benefactor of the nations of the former Soviet bloc. As it turns out, however, there are other sides to the eccentric figure who has now decided to make his formidable presence felt in our electoral politics....

At some point in the late 1990s, after years of devoting himself to the former Communist world, Mr. Soros decided that his attention was required in America. His first major venture into domestic issues was in support of the campaign to decriminalize drugs. He credits the poet Allen Ginsberg, an apostle of sexual and chemical liberation whom he befriended in the 1980s, with having alerted him to the injustice of American drug laws. Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute, and a man sometimes described as Mr. Soros's "secretary of state," has explained the allegedly malicious intent behind our current drug laws in these loaded terms: "Criminalization is a strategy that buys into the notion that if you lock up enough young black males — for whatever reason — you will promote public safety." In line with such thinking, Mr. Soros has not only made possible various state ballot initiatives to legalize "medical" marijuana, but he has advocated such "reforms" as "making heroin and certain other illicit drugs available on prescription to registered drug addicts."

No less outré have been Mr. Soros's many pronouncements since the late 1990's on the state of the American and global economies. "Capitalism is coming apart at the seams," he declared at the time of the Asian financial debacle. Decrying the rise of what he called "laissez-faire ideology," Mr. Soros painted a picture at once apocalyptic and unoriginal:

There has been an ongoing conflict between market values and other, more traditional value systems.... As the market mechanism has extended its sway, the fiction that people act on the basis of a given set of nonmarket values has become progressively more difficult to maintain. Advertising, marketing, even packaging aim at shaping people's preferences rather than, as laissez-faire theory holds, merely responding to them. Unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value.... The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor.

And what remedies did Mr. Soros suggest? As a first step, the creation of an international central bank; in the long run, nothing less than a transformation of how the world itself is governed. "To stabilize and regulate a truly global economy," he wrote, "we need some global system of political decision-making." Though it was neither "feasible nor desirable" to "abolish the existence of states," Mr. Soros conceded, nevertheless "the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions."

Two years later, with Asia's woes abating rather than spreading as he had forecast they would, Soros admitted to having "some egg on my face." But even as he acknowledged the error of his diagnosis, he clung fast to his far-reaching prescription. A world of globalized economics, he insisted, required something akin to globalized government.

Given this set of predilections, it is not hard to see how Soros would have been driven to paroxysms of frustration by the notoriously "unilateralist" Bush administration and the war in Iraq. As he explains in his new book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy," the United States has now fallen into "the hands of a group of extremists" whom he identifies as "neoconservatives" or "social Darwinists" and who espouse an "ideology of American supremacy." The only element missing from the "master plan" they hatched well before arriving in office in 2001 was a suitable pretext for action. For them, according to Mr. Soros, the attacks of 9/11 were therefore a godsend. "Communism used to serve as the enemy; now terrorism can fill the role."

As an alternative to the arrogance of American supremacy secured by means of military power, Mr. Soros proposes the "Soros doctrine." Through the good agency of the United Nations and our own foreign-aid efforts, he writes, we need to answer our enemies not with force of arms but with "preventive action of a constructive nature." ....

Cold as he is toward the Jewish people, Mr. Soros is not much warmer toward his adopted country. "I had never quite become an American," he once said. Now he complains that today's America "is not the America I chose as my home," as if, by turning conservative and electing George W. Bush as President, the country has failed to live up to him.

The egotism of the remark is revealing. Mr. Soros has admitted to having "carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble." Having made his mark, he now seems to give them free rein. He told one interviewer that he had "godlike, messianic ideas," and another that he sometimes thought of himself as "superhuman." To still a third he explained that his "goal is to become the conscience of the world."

This self-imagined messiah has now come to save the world from the America of George W. Bush and its war against terrorism. He is convinced that this is an unjustified war, contrived in response to events (the attacks of 9/11) that "should have been treated as crimes against humanity... requir[ing] police work, not military action." To say the least, it is a strange idea, and an even stranger role, for one who owes not only his immense fortune but also his freedom and even his life to America, and in particular to its willingness to confront those who have committed crimes against humanity with enough military force to defeat and stop them.

Mr. Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism." This article appears in the March issue of Commentary.

See also George Soros, Call Your Office.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/10/04 07:19:35 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.