Play on Words?
Posted on | October 20, 2004 |
James Taranto takes a critical look at an article in the Washington Post about Senator Kerry’s foreign policy. Here is the item in question.
Kerry’s belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, “If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.”
And here is Mr.Taranto’s analysis.
So the U.N.–that club of dictators and anti-Semites–is worth dying for, but America isn’t? This quote sharply summarizes why the thought of waking up two weeks from today to the news that Kerry is president-elect invokes in us a sense of utter dread.
My first reaction would be to admit that this is simply a play on words. But then I think back to the first Presidential debate when Kerry said,
But if and when you do it, Jim, you have 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.
Is it really a play on words?
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