What makes me angry about Kerry’s remarks is that he didn’t just point out the two attitudes; he is taking the stance that one attitude obviously renders the other null and void. When, as I was trying to say above, that is not the case. Again–in wartime, this is just the way it is, two truths side by side: war is hell, and good can come out of it. I’ve always thought that people who say “war never solved anything” are being ridiculous; of course it has. That doesn’t mean a terrible price doesn’t come along with it.

I live in a Southern state, and know something of the history of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It was awful, especially for the newly liberated slaves; they feared for their lives, with the rise of the KKK, and having been thrown out on the streets with no way to make their living, no knowledge of how to take care of themselves, not a lot of sympathy from both Southern and Northern whites, etc. So should we say–and people did at the time–that, because things were so bad for years and years, this shouldn’t have happened? That they should have stayed with their slaveowners because they were at least protected then, and it was all nasty old Abe Lincoln’s fault for throwing everything into such a mess?

Situations like that and like Iraq are contradictory in their very essence, as I think Allawi understands. If all Kerry had done was point that out, I wouldn’t have a problem. But he wants to make one view wrong and one right, and (like he did in his Vietnam era) goes back and forth to whatever suits him at the moment.