Zell’s Zeal and Kerry’s ‘Defenselessness’
By Paul M. Weyrich
CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com Commentary
September 10, 2004
Senator Zell Miller (D-GA), an ex Marine, is angry that the party he
spent a lifetime helping to build has gone so far to the left that it
is barely recognizable. Miller attacked the Democratic nominee, Senator
John Kerry (D-MA), in terms that no Republican would dare to do.
He gave a litany of the weapons systems that Kerry voted against in
his two decades in the United States Senate.
The Kerry apologists, who were all over the media the morning after
the Miller speech, tried to suggest that when a Senator votes against
a bill containing a weapons system it may be because he has some other
problem with the bill that has nothing to do with the weapons system.
Therefore, you see, Senator Kerry really isn’t against all of those
weapons after all. You have to understand these votes in context,
so they told us.
Nice try. However, my Internet angel Alex Mulkern unearthed a campaign
flyer from Lt. Governor John Kerry’s campaign for the United States
Senate in 1984. It is priceless. In this flyer, Kerry says of the
Reagan defense buildup “the biggest defense buildup since World War
II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel threatened by
the prospect of war.”
Kerry goes on to say, ldblquote…our national priorities become more
and more distorted as the share of our country’s resources devoted
to human needs diminishes.”
Then Kerry suggests there is a better alternative. He lists weapons
system after weapons system that he would cancel and the amount of
money that would be “saved” by canceling them. Among those which
would have been put on the chopping block back in 1984 are as follows:
The MX Missile. Cancel. Savings: $5 Billion. The
B-1 Bomber. Cancel. Savings: $8 Billion Anti-satellite
system. Cancel. Savings: $99 Million Star Wars. Cancel. Savings:
$1.3 Billion Tomahawk Missile. Reduce by 50%. Savings: $294
Million AH-64 Helicopter. Cancel. Savings: $1.4 Billion
Division Air Defense. Cancel. Savings: $638 Million The
Patriot Air Defense Missile. Cancel. Savings: $1.1 Billion
Aegis Air Defense. Cancel. Savings: $400 Million Battleship
reactivation. Cancel. Savings: $453 Million AV 88 vertical
take off and landing plane. Cancel. Savings: $1.0 Billion
F-15 fighter aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $2.3 Billion F-14A
fighter aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $1.0 Billion F-14B fighter
aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $286 Million Phoenix air-to-air
missile. Cancel: Savings: $431 Million Sparrow air-to-air
missile. Cancel. Savings: $264 Million
So there you have it. Did Zell Miller exaggerate? Before John Kerry
was even elected Senator he was calling for the elimination of some
of the most effective weapons systems we have.
Kerry said in this flyer: “If we don’t need the MX and the B-1 or these
other weapons systems, there is no excuse for casting even one vote for
unnecessary weapons of destruction and as your Senator I never will”
He got that right. This was back in 1984. Mikhail Gorbachev had just
come to power. It was Gorbachev and his generals who concluded that
they could not keep up with weapons development in the USA, especially
the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), and that is one of the
reasons that the Soviets threw in the towel.
Imagine, 20 years later, if the Kerry view had prevailed, we would
still be facing a menacing super power known as the Soviet Union. If
the Soviets didn’t have to compete with all of those sophisticated
weapons systems, they would be fighting on to this day. The Baltics
would still be Soviet Republics, as would Ukraine, Armenia and
Georgia. The Berlin Wall would likely still be up. Poland and the
satellite nations would not be free. Get the picture?
Zell Miller, in his litany of weapons systems which Senator Kerry
voted against, said he did by no means exhaust the list. He said
the list went on and on. True enough because in the past couple of
decades we have developed many more systems which Senator Kerry could
be against — weapons systems which have made this nation the only
remaining super power.
I am not one who believes in giving the Pentagon everything it
wishes. The Pentagon is a bureaucratic structure just as much as
Health and Human Services is. There is as much waste and abuse in
the Pentagon as there is in other areas of government.
Had Senator Kerry gone after waste and duplication and other areas
of misfeasance in the Pentagon he might well have served his nation
well. But in opposing every weapons system we have produced since
the middle 1980s, Senator Kerry displays a glaring weakness — one
which is fair game as we get into the serious part of the campaign.
No wonder the Democrats are now trying to say that Senator Miller
is mentally unbalanced. They can’t have voters examine what Kerry
said. If they do they will find the weakness Zell Miller spoke about
and they may well come to the same conclusion the Senator has come to,
namely the protection of his family comes before his political party.
(Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.)
Copyright 2004, Free Congress Foundation