Some Telling Quotes

On Kerry's Diplomacy: Batting 1000

John Kerry:

"I think we need a president who has the credibility to bring the allies back to the table and to do what's necessary to make it so America isn't doing this alone."

Even though Nato last week overcame members' long-running reservations about a training mission to Iraq and agreed to set up an academy there for 300 soldiers, neither Paris nor Berlin will participate.

Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said last week that France, which has tense relations with interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, had no plans to send troops "either now or later".

"I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president."

"I know I can do a better job in Iraq. I have a plan to have a summit with all of the allies, something this president has not yet achieved, not yet been able to do to bring people to the table."

France said Monday that it would take part in a proposed international conference on Iraq only if the agenda included a possible U.S. troop withdrawal, thus complicating the planning for a meeting that has drawn mixed reactions.

Paris also wants representatives of Iraq's insurgent groups to be invited to a conference in October or November, a call that would seem difficult for the Bush administration to accept.

"I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test [Iran], see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes."

[I]t would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear program in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad. "We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others.... What guarantees are there? Will they supply us one day and then, if they want to, stop supplying us on another day?"

"I'm going to immediately set out to have bilateral talks with North Korea."

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, standing at [Colin Powell's] side, said the "entire international community" agreed that the six-nation approach was the best way to deal with the problem.

Diplomacy On Poland:

John Kerry:

"The greatest position of strength is by exercising the best judgement in the pursuit of diplomacy, not in some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted, but in a genuine coalition."

Kwasniewski said: 'I don't think it's an ignorance. Anti-terror coalition is larger than the USA, the UK and Australia. There are also Poland, Ukraine, and Bulgaria etc. which lost their soldiers there. It's highly immoral not to see our strong commitment we have taken with a strong believe that we must fight against terror together, that we must show our strong international solidarity because Saddam Hussein was dangerous to the world.'

On Kerry's "Global Test":

John Kerry:

"No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America."

Asked if he would vote against the $87 billion if his amendment did not pass, Kerry said, "I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible."

"But if and when you do it . . . you've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test, where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending.

Asked what the Kerry Doctrine actually is, Holbrooke, in a conference call with reporters, replied: "There is no Kerry Doctrine."

The doctrine Kerry enunciated [at the DNC], after all, was the doctrine initially favored by the antiwar movement and the mainstream of the Democratic Party after the debacle of Vietnam. "Come home, America" was the cry of those who believed America had corrupted both the world and itself in "wars of choice" in Vietnam and elsewhere.

Advocates of this doctrine did not propose a "return" to some mythical American past. Rather, they proposed a radical departure onto a very different course in American foreign policy. Their goal was a retraction of American power and influence from around the globe. Nor did they have any doubt that their view of America was patriotic. They would cleanse America of its sins.

Would it really be surprising if John Kerry, whose life and thought were so powerfully shaped by his Vietnam experience, now returned to the view of American foreign policy which that experience led him to three decades ago?