Kerry has been called a flip-flopper. But give him credit here for a veiled consistency. He has indeed alternately supported wars he deemed necessary to protect "American people" and "values."
Mirroring President Bush's argument that it was necessary to protect Americans, Kerry voted for war in Iraq. "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing weaponizing (sic) of a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles, such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States itself," Kerry said in the Senate before the war vote.
Arguing it was necessary to protect "international principles of decency," Kerry supported Clinton's intervention in Serbia's civil war. Appearing on CNN in 1999, Kerry said of the Kosovo war: "I believe in the stand we're taking here. This is not on the side of one combatant or another, this is on the side of international principles of decency and of the appropriate behavior that civilized nations should live by at the end of this century and the beginning of the next."
Kerry insisted the U.S. must be ready to risk ground troops for this cause. "I don't think it necessarily requires troops," he said, "though I have been very clear that they should not be taken off the table."
On CNBC that year, Newsweek's Howard Fineman pressed Kerry to explain why his argument for intervening in Serbia did not also apply to war-torn Rwanda. Kerry's 130-word answer started by conceding, "That's a very fair question . . ." and included, "maybe that's something that needs to be thought about in the future."
No, it's not.
If America fought foreign wars to protect "values" or "international standards of decency" even when the freedom and security of Americans were not threatened, there would be no end to the places presidents could send American sons and daughters into harm's way -- and in none would it be necessary for Americans to die.
To be sure, Bush has voiced Wilsonianisms, too, albeit without Kerry's Clintonesque obfuscation. But if there is one American tradition Republicans and Democrats ought to agree to restore now, it is the one given us by our first president: We will fight no war unless it is necessary to defend the American people.