Obama on Iraq: What Would Kennedy Have Done?

I am a child of the 60's. Not to mean that I had long hair, smelled bad, smoked pot, and dodged military service. I mean that a lot of the ideas that came from the 60s got into my head and never left.

John Kennedy, in his inaugural address in January, 1960, kicked off the decade in grand style. If you haven't read the entire address, you should; it's one of the great writings of all time. However, in this political season, I find Kennedy's foreign policy idea from that address useful:

John F. Kennedy: Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses.:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Kennedy didn't just mean liberty for this country, but for all countries - that's clear from the entirety of the speech.

Going forward nearly 50 years, and we find Barack Obama, who does not support this notion. He reminds us often that he opposed our current conflagration with Iraq. But would Kennedy?

There are so many things that Hussein did that I could cite, any one of which should have found him wearing a 500 lb. bomb for a hat. But it didn't. Two things did it for me: there was the rampant criminal behavior of his two sons. They murdered and raped at will. But even before that, there were Hussein's experiments with chemical agents; I recall our own national news broadcasting video footage of the testing he did on puppies, showing them die miserable deaths while subjected to chemical weapons testing. I'd have slit his throat for that, myself.

In the intervening years, Hussein killed thousands of people - all of whom for his own political gain. How quickly we have forgotten Kuwait, and the Kurds. He was the Stalin of the Middle East.

Should nothing have been done? What would Kennedy have done? It's clear that Obama and Kennedy would have been at odds on this matter.

With the 2008 election looming, it's interesting to note that John Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, supports Obama. Through this action, she rejects her own father's great ideas.

How the times change.