Don Conley's Journal is an excellent MOR Blog.
I say that not based on some left-right, hawk-dove calculation but because I think there are only four honest, acceptable positions on the Iraq War that the American people will buy in 2004.
Position One: Trust Bush. There's a big segment of the electorate that supported the war simply because the Bush Administration did. Before Democrats tut-tut this stance, think back to how you thought of the Kosovo War and consider how much your opinion was influenced by the fact that this was Clinton's war. This segment of the electorate simply doesn't care about the public rationale for war, they trust President Bush on national security issues and will stand by him. There are many Republicans in this camp, a few independents and with the possible exception of Zell Miller, no Democrats.
Position Two: Toppling Saddam is enough. These people may or may not have bought the WMD rationale for the war, but they firmly believe that Saddam was an evil despot and getting him out of power was worth the loss of American life. Bush is trying very hard to win more Americans into this camp (because if you don't start out with position one, you won't migrate to it later.)
Position Three: I was duped. These are people who supported the war for the WMD rationale, but they now believe they were misled and that removing Saddam, while a good thing, wasn't worth this war. It's a hard position for a politician to take because he or she has to admit to being wrong on one of the most important issues of our time. But on the other hand, there are a huge number of Americans in this camp today.
Position Four: I was right all along. These are the people who opposed the war from the start and have not waivered in their opposition. If you can't demonstrate you were in this camp pre-war, you'll have a very hard time convincing people that you belong here.
So looking at the Democratic field through this prism, I have a very hard time accepting John Edwards' Iraq war position. If you believed WMDs were the rationale for going to war -- in fact spoke passionately about stopping Saddam before he acquired nuclear weapons -- you cannot continue to believe that argument today. You have to admit on some level that you were duped or misunderstood the evidence presented to you, then determine whether toppling Saddam was sufficient to justify the war after the fact.
Edwards is trying to draw a contrast to Kerry and Clark by remaining consistent in his Iraq War position, but by doing so, he's left himself in no-man's land, with a position that makes little sense and does nothing to indicate what kind of Commander in Chief he might be.
Posted by Dan Conley at 09:33 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) danconley.com |
