Dem frontrunner declares he will be stronger “war president” than Bush"

[DuctapeFatwa]

In a speech Friday in Los Angeles, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the likely presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, attacked the Bush administration’s management of the “war on terror” and declared that he would be a more effective—and more aggressive—“war president.”

In language essentially identical to that of Bush, he declared that the capture of Osama bin Laden would not mean an end to the conflict. “We don’t just face one man or one terrorist group,” he said. “We face a global jihadist movement of many groups, from different sources, with different agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and open and free societies around the globe.”

Kerry thus embraced the Bush administration’s main pretext for its militarist foreign policy as well as its domestic attacks on democratic rights and social spending: the assertion that a state of war exists—of indefinite duration, and against largely unidentified or yet-to-be-named terrorist enemies—and that, as a “war president,” the commander in chief must be granted extraordinary powers.

In reality, there is neither a constitutional nor a legal basis for the “war on terror.”..Kerry has said little in his campaign about the massive assault on democratic rights that has accompanied the “war on terror.” He has included a sentence or two about the performance of Attorney General John Ashcroft, and criticized abuses of power in the implementation of the USA Patriot Act, but Kerry voted for the legislation and has continued to defend that vote and praise many of its provisions.

In his Los Angeles speech, Kerry outlined a foreign policy posture hardly distinguishable from the Bush “doctrine of unilateral preemption,” as the prospective Democratic nominee termed it. He said that he would, if necessary, “order direct military action” against terrorist groups, with or without international support. “...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/kerr-m02.shtml