John Kerry for President - 126th National Guard Association of the United States General Conference

Kerry on the Military

Today's speech was almost a perfect mirror of the speech Kerry gave to the VFW. Kerry, after a career of voting to downsize and disarm the military, now wishes us to believe that he wants to increase it. Speaking at the 126th National Guard Association association today, he pledged that he would increase the size of the military by 40,000 men.

He also repeated another promise:

I will also double our Army Special Forces to hunt down the terrorists. In Afghanistan, after September 11th, our Special Forces fought the Taliban with remarkable skill. We saw what they could do during the Iraq war, when two teams of American Green Berets totaling 31 men worked with Kurdish troops to defeat an Iraqi force numbering in the hundreds. The victory at the battle of Debecka Pass is a tribute to the flexibility, training, and courage of our Special Forces.

Now, there are two things to be said about that. The first is that the part about the Special Forces being extremely skillful and highly successful is true.

The part about doubling the size of the Special Forces is not. It cannot be done while maintaining the standards of the Special Forces. Ralph Peters wrote about this the last time Kerry proposed it:

Specific promises Kerry made were outright nonsense. He claimed he'd double the size of our special operations forces. Sounds great. But to do so would rob regular line units of critically needed, experienced NCOs and officers, fatally compromise the high standards of our special operators and take at least a decade — unless he means to ruin special ops entirely.

And Kerry's going to increase our ground forces by 40,000 troops. Good idea. But he's not going to send them to Iraq, you understand.

Having it both ways again.

Kerry said we should never go to war without a plan to win the peace. Agreed. But where was he 18 months ago, when such a criticism could have made a difference?

Back then, he was voting for the war. Before he opposed it. Before supporting it again. Now he's against it again. Although he supports our troops, of course.

Does Kerry have no shame at all? No spine, whatsoever? Is it possible to be nothing but a bundle of pure ambition, with no shred of ethics? Is Kerry so hungry for office that he'll change any position to buy a vote?

Since Kerry gave the same speech, I suppose it's fair to recycle the critique, too. Keep reading until you get to "eel in a vat of olive oil."