Kerry: A (let someone else) take charge kinda’ guy

Did you ever see the Simpsons episode where Homer runs for sanitation commissioner? He defeats his opponent with a feel-good slogan: “Can’t somebody else do it?” Of course, Homer’s policy of pawning off responsibility leads to disaster.

Speaking of disaster, it’s hard to believe the Kerry campaign allowed their candidate to submit this painfully witless article to USA Today – “Plan is to bring troops home.” Descending immediately into self-parody, it begins:

I know what our troops go through when they carry an M-16 in a dangerous place and can't tell friend from foe.

No contextual background is provided for this important issue (pssst! It’s Iraq). Instead, let’s review the most important topic to John Kerry: John Kerry. Here we learn, in a heap of solipsism, that he carried an M-16 in some dangerous venue, probably Nantucket.

But I digress. Kerry has a plan to stabilize Iraq in four parts. I’ll summarize them:

1. Greater international involvement
2. Internationalize
3. This is not a task for America alone
4. Involve our allies

That’s the whole plan: let’s get somebody else to do it. The USA Today editorial page ran an editorial in the same paper criticizing the hollow strategy: “Missing in action: Kerry's complete strategy for Iraq.”

Both [Kerry and Bush] want more international military and financial help, a stable and relatively democratic government, an intensive training of Iraqi security forces and a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. But who wouldn't? The question is how to get there.

And the LA Times today noted that none of the Europeans are giving any indication they’re willing to provide troops, and certainly not at the levels that would allow significant American troop withdrawals as Kerry has promised. This is all shadow and fog, and a great disservice to the American troops with whom Kerry supposedly empathizes.

More: Blogs for Bush reviews the “plan” and waxes poetic: “John Kerry, how do I ridicule thee? Let me count the ways…”

Outside the Beltway: “With all due respect, Senator, it isn't a plan. It's a series of platitudes basically saying nothing more than "We're going to do exactly what the Bush Administration has been doing but it's going to somehow work when we do it."”

Priorities: “A Failed Plan from the Start?” (with background from the LA Times article)

And Professor Bainbridge has some thoughts too.