Nice new look man, and still a great post.

Kerry doesn't have the cojones to lead us. He CAN'T say the word "can"...he doesn't believe.

Nice insight.

John Kerry -- "The Status Quo Is Good. I'm Comfortable And Afraid Of Change"

Or,

Western civilization is all about a holding pattern. There's no point in trying to make things better. You just have to try to hold on to what you have.

Or,

I'm not interested in Victory -- if someone wins, that means someone else looses, and that's just too sad for them. I'm interested in peace and stability!

Amen! I believe the V for Victory is just a rehabilitated version of an old English salute to the French dating back to the 100 Years War. The English relied on the Welsh lomgbow men to neutralized the more numerous heavy French knights. When the French caught a bowman, they would cut off the two fingers used to draw the bow. The two fingers sign meant I still have mine and I am ready to put an arrow into some French arse.

You're right! He doesn't speak in broad, sweeping terms with a vision of the future. Kerry is more representative of the disillusioned "liberal" - because Vietnam was the liberals war. Hadn't been just a decade ago that JFK had called the nation to arms to "bear any burden" and free the oppressed? After Vietnam, there is no victory, and there is no hope for the future. Liberalism retracts and becomes stony realism. Bush is now being criticized as being "neo-Wilsonian" for having a belief that the world can be made a better place. Isn't that what liberalism and progressivism is all about? What happened to the heart of the Democrats? The hard "realism" of the liberals is one of the reasons I have chosen to support the President - the other is that he DOES believe in victory. That means something! Good points!

Great post. I linked you over at my site, Let's Try Freedom. This is a very insightful observation about Mr. Kerry.

As an Englishman I strongly object to the appropriation of Winston Churchill's good name to support Bush. Churchill would have seen Bush for what he is, an ignorant, uncultured buffoon not fit to lick his boots. You might like to remember that, like Kerry, Churchill saw combat and as a result had more respect for the lives of the young men he sent into battle. Let Bush stand or fall on his own merits. Please don't try and reflect glory onto him from the greatest Briton who ever drew breath. It's a cheap shot.

Churchill was half American, If he had been half French, you'd be speaking German.

Powerful and right on! This ought to be posted everywhere possible. Victory. So simple - Kerry is the "Can't Do Kandidate". Let's hope the American voters have the common sense that the Australians showed this weekend.

John Kerry has never been on the winning side of any war.

MRP. You would remember it was those buffoon Americans that Churchill worked to get over to save your limey asses. And yes, I have a right to say that too. I'm Yank/Brit just like Churchill.
So don't go all huffy over the parallel usage.
And don't bend over and pick anything off of the floor, you might get some dust under your fingernails.

Speaking of Churchill, you might want to read this "letter from America" written while the UN was discussing the prewar to Iraq, by the late Alistair Cooke.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/2720441.stm
after discussing the attitude of the League of Nations and popular anti war opinion in the UK and France, he says:
"I have to say I have written elsewhere with much conviction that most historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is different and it turns out to be the crucial one.It may well be so here. All I know is that all the voices of the 30s are echoing through 2003. "
as Instapundit says, read the whole thing...

I have to say, that even as one labeled "liberal", I was still impressed with your writing. I like to expose myself to both sides of arguments before deciding, and hence can be conservative on some points but liberal on others. I agree with much of what has been said above. I'm not totally crazy about Kerry myself.
However, and this is where I'll try and be as respectful as possible, I can't support Bush in a war we shouldn't be fighting in the first place. Yes, there needs to be a war on terrorism. Yes, tyranny must be overthrown. No, I don't think Kerry has the conviction to do so. However, I find it ever so difficult to support a president who would make such a grave error of judgement about going to war in Iraq when our business with the Al Queda is far from finished, completely ignore intelligence reports, advisors, fellow world leaders, and a large chunk of the american public and armed forces telling him it's a bad idea, and end up costing 1100 lives that could have been out chasing Osama, the true criminal in this war on terrorism. His entire chain of action regarding to Iraq frustrates me. If he had brought Osama to justice, I might have been able to overlook mistakes like Iraq, but when we've concentrated ten times as hard on Iraq as we have Afganistan based on a hunch it shows such an astounding, trust-shattering lack of judgement that I don't feel comfortable letting him continue.
It's much like how you may be a great employee and do just about everything right, but if you lose the biggest account or cost the company an unreasonable amount of money, they'll still have to let you go. How am I to say Key would be any better? Is the devil I know better than the devil I don't? I'm torn.
I've never been fond of Bush, I'll admit. But if he had shown me success enough in Afganistan to justify Iraq, or at least made responsible decisions towards it and non flip-flopped his concentration over to Iraq, I would still have supported him as a leader. Regan had his Iran-Contra, and still came through as a great leader. Bush, however, has not had enough shining moments to win me over. Show me that he does more good than bad, and I'll vote accordingly. Until then, I'm voting for the other guy. Having lost several friends to war, had several friends unemployed, and had seniors I care about lose their valued healthcare under his administration, I can't imagine Kerry making it much worse. I'm ready to give another make and model a chance for awhile, see how it runs. If he doesn't do much better, I'll just vote him out next election. Maybe Bush will run again then, and I'll go back to him. Either way, I think it's time for a change.

Shawn I want to thank you for visiting and I want to commend you for taking the time to write comment. There aint nothin in the world wrong with being a liberal. Once upon a time, liberal people stood for many of the things I do. Today, liberals tend to stand more for leftism rather than the general betterment of mankind.

Here at Varifrank, If you keep your argmuents about the ideas expressed and not the people giving them, make the clear and cogent and remember after you are done that we are both are equals under the law and brothers under the flag ,you are welcome to visit and comment anytime.

I like opposing opinions, I really do. I encourage people to think for themselves and by taking steps to listen to both sides, you are supporting yourself well. I do draw the line a cussing or written abuse of the blog-owner, commentors or anyone else for that matter. Those things getcha banned, not just from commenting but from the site as a whole. If I bug you bad enough to cause you to go into full blow tourettes syndrome then I think I have a duty to keep my content from those with such sensitive eyes. If it gets too far out of line as I have on 2 occaisions engaged the services of the police. (It's ok, it comes with the gig).

Here's the best frame of mind to be in when writing comments here at Varifrank. You and I are friends sitting at a bar, weve just gotten through the second beer when you being to make your statement. Make it in that context, and no matter what you have to say, it will be listened to much more freely than if you start by saying how stupid I am.

So true. Kerry comes off as the doom & gloom candidate. His slogan during the DNC was "hope is on the way," but I fail to see what hope he offers -- unless your idea of "hope" is "anyone but Bush."

Ah, "what would Churchill do" (or think), a game for all the family.

My suggestions: His whole agenda would be to win the war. (Fighting for a draw would never occur to him, much less regarding "war" as a "metaphor".) If he could kick socialists at the same time, he'd love that - and he might even over-do it and lose power, as he did (running against socialism when nobody wanted to hear that) before the end of World War Two.

He would be highly aggressive, prone to bold adventures and extremely ruthless. People blame "Bomber" Harris for terror bombing, politely ignoring the fact that Churchill had to approve it, and did.

He would be very keenly aware of old history. Think of Victor Davis Hansen.

He would look at the map with different eyes from most people. Most people see land, important or diplomatically noisy states, and gaps marked blue in between, Churchill would see waterways and their uses first, then land in relation to the water, then all sorts of states, not just the ones people think of as important, and he would see them first of all in terms of an old-fashioned picture atlas with stereotyped images of what kind of people live here.

He would be naturally, warmly pro-American, but also inclined to forgive France (but not Jacques Chirac) almost anything, just because it is France. And, like Tony Blair, he would be as keen as practical on working with old Europe - on his terms.

He would fight in a very political way, not a strictly military and material way - but for him that would mean manipulating others, not at all being willing to submit to a "global test". He would be more interested in getting others to take his tests. If he felt he had the power, or (nowadays) was backed by sufficient American power, he would rewrite any or all international laws (like the law of blockade) to his benefit.

I think his attitude to President George W. Bush would start with the assumption that he, Churchill, already knew best how to win the overall war. (And he would indeed have thought about it and come up with something a lot more serious than the Bush plan relabelled the Churchill plan.) He would be thinking something like this about Bush: "Splendid fellow. Religious, not like me, but that may be all to the good in such a religious country, it could help him to sell my plans to his countrymen. Now, how do I get him to love me, or at least like me? How do I influence him, how do I set him on the right path to victory?"

A lot of that may read as presumptuous and annoying, but I'm pretty sure from my reading on him that that was what Churchill was like.

The Americans thought they got far more good out of him through his fighting spirit, dedication to the common cause and ability to inspire his countrymen than they ever suffered from his manipulative ways, high risk-tolerance and shaky judgment. I'm sure they were right.

If Churchill was leading the British now, I think he'd be trying to deter Syria and Iran from continued involvement in Iraq. And I think his ideas on how far you could go to achieve a worthwhile military objective such as that would frighten the life out of most people. Churchill was not a modern man, he was a 19th Century hard-core imperialist for real, very old-fashioned even in his own era. He did not have modern restraints. He had a finite concern for the lives of obstreperous fuzzy-wuzzies. By comparison,. Bush would be conservative, and a bleeding heart. (Bombing Afghanistan with food packages - a quintessential charitable and idealistic American/George W. Bush move.)

I admire Winston Churchill, but I'm glad George W. Bush and not Winston Churchill is running this war.

"Good Diplomacy", who talks like that?

Who talks like that? Hmm, how about the President of the United States of America?

Good diplomacy really depends upon good personal relations, whether or not we agree with each other on a lot of issues, or not. And I'm going to continue the diplomacy that reaches out to people on a regular basis.

Or even his press secretary:

That informal air is, in the President's judgment, conducive to good diplomacy.

More than once it seems:

I'm going to leave private conversations where they belong, which is in the realm of good diplomacy.

Let's go back to the big dog:

Part of diplomacy, by the way, good diplomacy says to leaders, I think you need to listen to the truth, and the truth will set you free and help people survive.

Hit me baby one more time:

It seemed like to me that we've got a challenge to make sure that people in countries like Indonesia understand the nature of the American people, that how we think is going to be an important part of good diplomacy in the long run.

Ari gets the last word:

The United States cannot do it for them, but the United States can be there to help the various parties come together, to work them along through good diplomacy.

All this focus on 'good diplomacy' makes me think you missed the whole point of this piece.

In short - while Kerry talks about fighting, talks about methods of fighting, Kerry never talks about it ever being possible and necessary to win.

Shawn, I respectfully disagree with the idea of trying out a new make and model for four years. Even as a registered Democrat, I'm going to go with the devil we know over the devil we don't.

I don't know Sen. Kerry because he keeps saying he has a plan but hasn't articulated the details of it so that I can give it a test drive and evaluate it.

I don't know Sen. Kerry because he doesn't talk about his Senate record and how it proves that he has the torque and the leadership skills to stay at the front of the pack.

I'm picky about my cars, and you won't see me buyin' that model, thankyouverymuch.

You can learn all you need to know about Kerrys "plan" by reading the review I did of his 1997 book "The New War",normally I would tell you to read it yourself, but since Im still in therapy after exposure to the book, I wouldnt do that to anyone:

You can read my summary of the "New War" here:

http://varifrank.com/archives/2004/09/summary_analysi.php

In Short: It's all your fault peasant, and only I can save you from the mess you've gotten us into. It takes him 168 pages and 25 years in government service to say essentially that.

Frank -

Wonderful post. I think your idea for crickets and bumper art is fabulous.

I held a cricket in my hand just today at the Dollar Store...and did think of the Longest Day, too.

I admire Winston Churchill. I also think he would have sold a large chunk of his soul to have the caliber of advisers that Bush has surrounded himself with.

...-!