Profiles in Courage - The Sequel

I can understand why Instapundit has his suspicions about the bizarre behavior of the Kerry campaign in reaction to Iraqi interim PM Allawi’s visit to Washington – dissing an ally during war, etc.

I think that statements like this are more evidence that the Kerry campaign — or at least the Clinton folks running it — expects to lose. Hence, they don’t have to worry about who they’ll be working with, but they want to fire up the anti-Bush base. That doesn’t make it any less disgraceful to be going around uttering comments that might as well be designed to undermine America’s alliances, of course. This sort of stuff is appalling.

It certainly is, but I think it’s more a product of “Hail Mary” desperation than a conscious desire to bring out the base. The isolationist anti-war left, noisy as they are, do not constitute a large enough minority to be useful in that regard. Bad strategy all around. It might even be a turnoff, because it leaves us with these Profiles in Courage to compare:

1. Awad Allawi – a man who was once left for dead (1978) in his Surrey home after having been bludgeoned with an ax by one of Saddam’s henchman who thought he had killed him. Allawi then spent a year in a hospital. He is still said to walk with a limp and is now the object of, one would imagine, daily assassination attempts.

2. John Kerry – a man who left the Vietnam War after 4 1/2 months after having been “seriously wounded” – a description that now even his biographer finds dubious.