The Bad Kerrey

I am reminded why I came to loathe Bob Kerrey. He’s one of those self-serving “bi-partisan” iconoclasts who refuses to deal in the real world. His questioning of Cohen is typical.

The idea that Clinton, in the fall of 2000, could have invaded Afghanistan without the support of congress, any of our allies or the American people is so ludicrous I can’t believe he’s even making the argument. Apparently, Bob thinks that it is perfectly permissable, indeed it is required, that a president make military decisions in a complete political vacuum.

Clearly, the Clinton administration could only prepare a response to the Cole bombing, (which nobody in the entire world saw as such an imminent threat that it required all out war) that they had every reason to believe would likely be carried out by the next administration, be it Gore or Bush. That’s the way our bi-partisan foreign policy used to work and it is the way it should work. If Bob Kerrey or anybody else thinks that a lame duck president should go it alone and invade a country without any political support at home or abroad just one month before the presidential elections he has a hole in his head.

As Cohen pointed out, the Republican congress was a bunch of rabid dogs who had no qualms about accusing Clinton of everything from rape to treason. Invading Afghanistan against the wishes of the military and the rest of the world, ignoring all of the political considerations would have been insane. Kerrey is, as he’s always been at least half the time, a useless grandstanding tool for the GOP on this stuff. You can certainly criticize Clinton for a lot of things in this matter, but this isn’t one of them.

I don’t even think Bush could could have invaded Afghanistan before 9/11. Up to now, I was just wishing he would have, you know, acted like he gave a shit and did what he could to thwart what everybody seemed to know was a big plot, likely on American soil. It had worked with the millenium bombing and there is ample evidence that we might have “connected the dots” if a little more attention had been paid. I didn’t realize that we are now saying that Clinton or Bush should have willy nilly invaded Afghanistan without any support of anybody, including the military.

Update: Yglesias has more on Kerrey’s backing of Chalabi and the INC (along with — surprise — our good friend Joe Loserman.)

He also appeared on Matthews making the same self-serving tough guy points. However, Trent Lott came on soon after and had the predictable effect of making Kerrey look moderate, sane and reasonable by comparison. Context is everything, I guess.