The Herky-Jerky Approach
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, November 15, 2002; Page A33
If you're not happy with the Bush
administration's policy toward Iraq at
any given moment, just wait a week
or two. A new policy, more to your
liking, is bound to appear.
Over the past four months, the Bush
policy has gyrated between
assertions that the United States
would go it alone and a quest for
cooperation from the United
Nations; between an insistence on
"regime change" and an acceptance
of the idea that simply ridding
Saddam Hussein of his most
dangerous weapons would be
enough.
The obvious explanation for this is
that the policy has been set one
week by the go-it-alone
regime-changers, Vice President
Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, and the next by Secretary of State Colin Powell, a
multilateral disarmer. This is a Powell moment, and even administration critics
are lauding him for brokering a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote for tough
inspections.
"We've decided to go to the United Nations, which all of us who opposed [the
congressional war resolution] argued was the right step," said Sen. Dick Durbin,
an Illinois Democrat who was not afraid to stake out a clear position on Iraq
before the elections and was reelected handily. "The voice of Colin Powell was
drowned out in the early phases of this debate in the White House," Durbin
continued, but "Powell has picked up steam."
Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who has criticized the administration
hawks but voted for the war resolution, saw the U.N. action as "a significant
win for Powell" because "he was able to redirect the administration's efforts
into a responsible, international channel."
You can tell the inside-the-administration hawks are worried that Durbin and
Hagel may be right by the response of the leading outside-the-administration
hawks, William Kristol, the conservative editor, and Robert Kagan, the
conservative foreign-policy analyst.
"[The] weeks of negotiations carried out by the State Department have eroded
the president's position, not terminally, but worryingly," they have written. "The
inspections process on which we are to embark is a trap. . . . Will the clarity of
the case for war have been compromised, perhaps fatally, by the latest round of
diplomacy?"
Kristol and Kagan hold out hope that Bush is truly on their side -- and who
knows? Bush's herky-jerky approach may yet reflect a masterful strategy. We
just don't know which one. The president could be using Powell to build an
international alliance to support the war that the hawks (and he) ultimately want
waged. Or he could be using the hawks to push the world into supporting much
sterner inspections and Iraqi disarmament, as Powell wishes. Or the president
may be genuinely undecided, or just waiting.
An effective opposition party might have something useful to say about all this
uncertainty. Senators such as Durbin (and for that matter a Republican such as
Hagel) can speak forcefully now because they were unafraid to stake out clear
positions earlier. But too many Democrats simply wanted to push Iraq aside so
they could get to that economic message of theirs that worked so brilliantly on
Nov. 5.
Democrats can fairly complain, as Durbin does, that the administration pushed
for a congressional vote on Iraq before the elections "for political reasons" -- to
underscore the Democratic divisions and uncertainties on foreign policy and to
push national security, a Republican issue, to the front of voters' minds.
But that is precisely the problem: Why must national security issues inevitably
favor the Republicans? For the beginning of an answer, consult Heather
Hurlburt's wise article "War Torn" in the November issue of the Washington
Monthly.
"Democrats are in this position," she wrote before the election, "precisely
because we respond to matters of war politically, tactically. We worry about
how to position ourselves so as not to look weak, rather than thinking through
realistic, sensible Democratic principles on how and when to apply military
force, and arguing particular cases, such as Iraq, from those principles."
Had the Democrats made a concerted push much earlier for a tough
multilateral approach to Iraq -- as former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke
was urging them to do -- the party could have claimed victory when Bush
turned toward the United Nations. Instead, as Hurlburt wrote, "most hid behind
'tough questions' without offering a credible alternative."
Defeat leaves a party with a very big to-do list. At the top of that list for
Democrats is the need for an alternative foreign policy. It would insist on the
need to cultivate alliances and to avoid turning our friends into gratuitous critics.
But it would also be tough and unafraid to engage in the world. Too bad Colin
Powell is too busy to give them a hand. |
