To the Editor:
I am a Fairfield University Alumni who enjoys reading the Mirror but last week’s commentary piece by Michael A. Bond troubled me. The questions Mr. Bond raised seem off point in a post-9/11 environment where the major concern isn’t about what one did over thirty years ago but about how one will handle the homeland security concerns of this nation. Mr. Bond attacks President Bush’s military service record without looking at the pressing issues of a war on terror and Iraq.
There are a few points that I would like to raise from Mr. Bond’s commentary piece. To began what does being a “war president” mean? Clearly, if serving in a foreign war makes one a war president then President Clinton would have been just as illegitimate as President Bush. Should we only ask men and women to first serve in the armed forces before we let them run for the office of President? I think we need to look deeper into national security issues instead of focusing on whether a potential presidential candidate was physically near a combat zone.
What matters is how both men have dealt with national security issues during their years of elected service to this country. Although Senator Kerry served in Vietnam and fought honorably, his voting record in the Senate has not helped this country in its fight against terrorists. During the 1990s Kerry took positions that questioned the size of America’s defense and intelligence budgets – actually voting to cut covert military and CIA operatives best-suited to fight a war against terrorism. Senator Kerry even once voted against the death-penalty for terrorists.
Today Senator Kerry clearly wants to have it both ways. Voting for the war in Iraq but also trying to pin the Iraq fallout on the President. Congress, not the President, gives the authorization to go to war. President Bush went to Congress and asked for that authority. Kerry, along with 76 other Senators gave the President the power to wage war with Iraq. It was Senator Kerry’s constitutional duty to question the President and matters relating to sending men and women off to war. Clearly, Senator Kerry did not do this and has to rectify voting for a war that has major questions concerning its justifications: namely, the weapons of mass destruction issue.
Now Senator Kerry is trying to wiggle out of this spot – saying, “The reason I can’t tell you to a certainty whether the president misled us is because I don’t have any clue what he really knew about it …. ” How can someone with nearly 20 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee not have known the justifications for going to war? And if the justifications were not clear then Kerry should not of voted for war: 21 of his Democratic colleagues didn’t.
Senator Kerry and President Bush both have a number of questions that they must answer during this campaign, but to merely state that Kerry is the better of the two men because he served in Vietnam is laughable to say the least.
Dave Catelotti Fairfield Alumni – Class of 2000
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