"Flip-Flap, Flop-Flip"
That was what John Kerry said on The Daily Show during the Presidential campaign of 2004 when Jon Stewart asked him in an over-the-top, point-blank manner "Have you ever flip-flopped?"
Kerry could have knocked that out of the park, went down the list of how WorstPresidentEver has himself flip-flopped (I was against nation-building before I was for it, I was against the Department of Homeland Security before I was for it, I was against the 9/11 Commission before I was for it, etc, etc.) or he could have explained how contrived convictions is no substitute for good judgement. But he came back with that lame answer. If he didn't come up with a powerful standard response to that ridiculous "flip-flopping" charge that late in the campaign, I knew he was in trouble.
Welp, two years and one shitmire later, Kerry has been somewhat vindicated (remember, he still supported a war in Eye-Rack, just not Bush's war in Eye-Rack) and he has a new "I toldja so!" column in the Washington Post. There he FINALLY puts the smackdown on the discredited "stay the course" logic, but he also highlights an overlooked criticism of Bush's latest strategy:
We have already tried a trimmed-down version of the McCain plan of indefinitely increasing troop levels. We sent 15,000 more troops to Baghdad last summer, and today the escalating civil war is even worse. You could put 100,000 more troops in tomorrow and you're only going to add to the number of casualties until Iraqis sit down together at a bargaining table and compromise. The barrel of a gun can't answer the question of how you force Iraqi nationalism to trump sectarian loyalty.
Indeed.