This has been a rough couple of weeks for some of us. Whatever your opinion of the election results—and there was some good among the general disappointment—our government is increasingly farcical, the SEC might be too strong for another BCS Championship, and Disney may ruin what remains of the Star Wars legacy. While we’re at it, the election has evoked multiple reasons for everyone to calm down and retire some stale tropes. And to top it all off, the world is scheduled to end next month. Talk about hell in handbasket.
But the real intrigue comes in the expected chatter about cabinet shifts for the president’s second term. For whatever reason, the administration purportedly wants Susan “spontaneous protests” Rice to take the helm of State while John “ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do” Kerry assumes the mantle of Defense. Some Republicans may understandably hope a Kerry appointment will open a path for Scott Brown Goes to Washington, redux. Others continue to regard the senior Senator from Massachusetts with a lingering disdain for troubles past.
What’s a proper military salute among defense-cutting friends?
These occasions to muse over such matters as Sen. Kerry’s fitness for office, liberal reactions to the military, and the sword of sequestration looming over the Pentagon reminds me of the West Point commencement address William F. Buckley, Jr. gave, long before I was born, on the value of America:
Most specifically he singled out for criticism a sentence uttered by Mr. Agnew here at West Point a year ago: “Some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse.” Mr. Kerry insists that the so-called misfits are the true heroes, inasmuch as it was they who “were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to.” As for the men in Vietnam, he added, “we cannot consider ourselves America’s ‘best men’ when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.”
Given all the talk of drones, civil liberties, and accusations of government-sanctioned murder, I wonder what John Kerry and his fellow travelers think of America and her “best men” now.
Token Dissonance 
November 13, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Rek, Kerry had a right to say what he said. He went out into gunfire on the Vietcong and pulled his comrades to safety in the midst of fire (and fire that struck, mind you).
Michael Moore whining and moaning on the sidelines is bad form. Kerry, who knew and experienced combat in the most dreadful of ways, was more than justified in speaking out, even though I’m sure he reflects on his experience in slightly different terms today. I don’t see how swiftboating Kerry serves as a meaningful argument for why he wouldn’t make a suitable Defense Sec.
The real story for me here is Obama backstabbing Kerry. It is known by anyone who has half a brain in Washington that Obama all but assured Kerry he would have the job at State after Clinton – and as well, that Kerry has been coveting State ever since Obama’s election. For Obama to choose Susan Rice, who I agree acted with the utmost incompetence on Benghazi, to lead the State Department over him is at once confusing and concerning.
November 17, 2012 at 7:09 pm
I agree with the commenter above. Kerry is one of the least worse of a very, very bad bunch.