September 2, 2004

The Kerry Record on National Defense

Here is John Kerry's Senate record on national defense. Also, you can read the memo from 1984 where Kerry outlines his proposal to end funding for virtually every important weapons system that, as it turns out, the American military is using to win the war on terror.

Click each image to enlarge a page of the 2-page memo.

If Kerry had won the day back in the 1980s, today he'd be running for President so he could be Commander In Chief of the U.S. Disarmed Forces.

Will Collier has more details on Kerry's voting record on national defense...

Kerry unleashed a campaign memo in 1984 saying, among other things:

Congress, rather than having the moral courage to challenge the Reagan Administration, has given Ronald Reagan almost every military requiest he has made, no matter how wasteful, no matter how useless, no matter how dangerous.

The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so. And our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country’s resources devoted to human needs diminishes.

Those aren't the words of somebody who was serious about fighting the Cold War. Those are the words of a committed dove.

Remember, this isn't from 1992, when the Gulf War victory and Soviet collapse were recent events. This is in the first half of 1984, just a few months after the Soviet Union shot down KAL flight 007. The Soviets and their puppets were still in complete control of "New Europe." Lech Walesa was under house arrest, Vaclav Havel was about to be imprisoned again, Cuban troops were wreaking havoc in Africa, Nicaraguan Communist forces were doing their level best to take over the rest of Central America for the Soviets, and the Soviets' own military buildup was continuing apace.

There was no "glasnost" visible on the horizon in those days; they were among the darkest of the long Cold War. But Kerry still explicitly called for the outright cancellation of:

NUCLEAR FORCES
* MX Missile --- Cancel --- $5.0 billion
* B-1 Bomber --- Cancel --- $8.0 billion
* Anti-satellite system --- Cancel --- $ 99 million
* Star Wars [sic] --- Cancel --- $1.3 billion
* Tomahawk Missile --- Reduce by 50 per cent --- $294 million

LAND FORCES
* AH-64 Helicopters --- Cancel --- $1.4 billion
* Division Air Defense Gun (DIVAD) --- Cancel --- $638 million
* Patriot Air Defense Missile --- Cancel --- $1.3 billion

NAVAL FORCES
* Aegis Air-Defense Cruiser --- Cancel --- $800 million
* Battleship Reactivation --- Cancel --- $453 million

AIRCRAFT
* AV-8B Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft --- Cancel --- $1.0 billion
* F-15 Fighter Aircraft --- Cancel --- $2.3 billion
* F-14A Fighter Aircraft --- Cancel --- $1.0 billion
* F-14D Fighter Aircraft --- Cancel --- $286 million
* Phoenix Air-to-Air Missile --- Cancel --- $432 million
* Sparrow Air-to-Air Missile

Just taking the last section, as somebody who's been working on fighter jets and air-to-air weapons for the last decade, I can't even imagine how our armed forces would be able to operate today if Kerry's advice had been heeded. Certainly we would not have been able to fight the Gulf War, or Afghanistan, or the liberation of Iraq. More likely, we'd have a small caretaker force today, something more resembling Canada or one of the lesser Euro states.