Surprisingly tough editorial in the Chicago Trib.
Channeling Howard Dean
September 23, 2004
Last December, when Howard Dean was riding high among Democrats for his denunciation of the war in Iraq, another candidate for his party's presidential nomination attacked Dean as weak on foreign policy.
Speaking at Drake University in Des Moines, John Kerry blasted "those in my own party who threaten to take us down a road of confusion and retreat." In response to Dean's assertion that the capture of Iraq's dictator hadn't made America safer, Kerry said: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president of the United States."
Kerry's aggressive defense of his own stand on Iraq came as no surprise: After his 2002 Senate vote to authorize the war, Kerry often characterized disarming Hussein as "the right decision." In May 2003, Kerry said on ABC that while he "would have preferred" more diplomacy before going to war, "I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."
As recently as last month, Kerry was sticking by that principle, stating that even if he had known the U.S. wouldn't find unconventional weapons in Iraq or prove close ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, he still would have voted to authorize the war. But succeeding weeks have confronted Kerry with two harsh realities: His presidential candidacy has ebbed in public opinion polls, and Iraq has grown bloodier.
So it was bizarre, although not exactly shocking, to hear Kerry veer left during a speech on Monday: "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure ..." he said. "Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions, and if we do not change course, there is a prospect of a war with no end in sight."
Kerry, who knows a few things about changing course, evidently believes he and his Senate colleagues were right to give President Bush the authority to wage war, but that Bush was wrong to use the authority. What's more, he suggested, under Bush, we may be losing that war.
Kerry gave little definition to the change of course he represents. He did, though, say: "We could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years."
That's the kind of specificity that different listeners hear in different ways. Appreciative Americans might fairly conclude that Kerry wants to bring our boys and girls home. Other groups--nervous Iraqi citizens awaiting democracy, the vicious insurgents who plague them, and the coalition forces serving alongside U.S. troops--might fairly conclude that the Democrat who would be president is primarily interested in getting the heck out of Iraq ASAP.
Bush, too, says he wants to bring the troops home. But he is--as he has been for three years--steadfastly committed to defeating terrorists, challenging the governments that give them succor, and projecting democracy as broadly as possible in the Middle East as a step toward defanging Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
Kerry, by contrast, speaks less ambitiously about fighting "our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists." A logician devoted to this nation's long-range security--not just to making today's problems go away--might conclude that Kerry's goal is necessary but by no means sufficient.
Elections are approaching in both the U.S. and Iraq. Officials in both countries have said that terrorists could escalate their violence in order to break the will of Americans and Iraqis alike.
It will be interesting to see how Americans react to Kerry's bleak prognosis. One crucial task will be to make sure he doesn't come across as a prospective commander in chief who, having long defended his war authorization vote, now thinks insurgents have made the fight too tough.
Because, when he delivered that speech in Des Moines, Kerry also eviscerated Howard Dean for having been "all over the lot" on Iraq: "One moment he supported authorizing the use of force, the next he criticized those who did."
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