Some of you reading this blog may not be old enough to remember Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (he was before Leno) but he did a routine he called 'Karnak the Magnificent'. He would come on stage wearing an oversized turban that kept falling off and a cape. His shtick was to provide the questions to the answers kept secret in a mayonnaise jar on the porch of Price, Waterhouse or somebody. It was one of his best routines and it would crack Ed McMahon for real.
John Kerry is no Karnak. He seems to have the same ability to put his foot in his mouth. But he also made one of the best summations about the Vietnam debacle. When he appeared before Senate Foreign Relations committee after the Winter Soldier investigation, he boldly asked the Senator's arrayed before him, "How do you ask the last man to die for a mistake?" The same question can be legitimately asked about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. History will record it as the biggest blunder in American foreign policy since Vietnam. Even the Republican "grown ups"--the security advisors to the President's daddy--recognize the reality. Beyond the moral debt we have to the Iraqi people for destroying their country is the one we have to our own people. American soldiers are still dying in a three way civil war we precipitated while American politicians temporize. There is no good solution to the mess beyond reducing our losses. Staying where we are clearly not wanted is only prolonging the Iraqi misery. Spending more money on an unjustified war only compounds the evil we do in the name of freedom.
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