October 17, 2004

Why I'm Supporting Dubya

The Centrality of Iraq

The impending election, in large part, turns on whether the American people believe George Bush or John Kerry is better suited to be Commander in Chief whilst prosecuting something we've come to call the global war on terror ("GWOT"). Now fundamental to all this, the big 800-pound gorilla in the room, is the Iraq war. Some individuals believe the war in Iraq and the GWOT are one and the same--Iraq an integral part of the wider war--and that we remain right to have gone in. Others believe Iraq was always destined to be a massive blunder--not only distracting us from the real war on terror but also, tragically, actually worsening our position in the GWOT by further poisoning relations with the Islamic (particularly Arab Muslim) world. Still others accept that the Iraq war was a necessary part of the GWOT but that it has proven a net negative given strategic blunders in theater.

The pessimists make a strong case that the war was a bad idea. Over 1,000 American servicemen and women are dead. Many thousands more wounded. Britons, Poles, Italians and other coalition countries have lost personnel. USD $120B, and counting, has been spent on the war effort. The cost in blood and treasure has been dear--and it looks set to keep mounting for a good while yet. Not to mention the cost to Iraqis. Yes, they have been freed from a bloody tyrant. But perhaps well over ten thousand Iraqis have perished since the war began. Suicide bombings are daily events in certain beleaguered Iraqi cities. Fallujah is controlled by fanatical terrorists and avowed fundamentalists. I've lost track of how many new Iraqi police forces have been massacred at recruiting stations. Lately, suicide bombers have taken to infiltrating the Green Zone itself-the very seat of interim Iraqi and coalition power--killing American nationals on their own front doorstep in brazen fashion.

Put simply, the U.S. has failed in providing basic security through wide, critical swaths of Iraq. And, consequently, reconstruction has severely lagged. So Iraqis can be forgiven musing whether the previous brutishly imposed order might not be preferable to the near chaos that reigns in parts of the country today. So, one might fairly ask, and to put it bluntly, how can I support the man who dragged us into this bloody mess, this foolhardy adventure--what might well potentially prove to be the worst foreign policy blunder for America since the Vietnam War.

A small vignette. Sometime in late 2001, I was having lunch with a couple attorneys in Washington DC. One of the lawyers, who will remain unnamed, is a smart pro who knows well the ins out and out of the Beltway and has lots of Pentagon and Middle East experience. Talk quickly turned to Iraq. My lunchmate had recently been over at the Pentagon talking to people. War-planning, he told me, seemed underway. 'Can you believe they are really serious about it' was basically the vibe he was giving off. They're gonna go into Iraq! Crazy! Do they have a clue what they are getting themselves into?

Were such skeptics right all along? And were the very smartest of the elites who were pro-intervention snookered or clueless (I'm thinking of the Ken Pollacks, Andrew Sullivans, Leon Wieseltiers, Fareed Zakarias). Well, now about two years out--we have a better sense of what Iraq has wrought. No rosy-colored lens over here at B.D.--I've mentioned the difficulties we face above. But let's also look at the positive side of the ledger. The Battle of Baghdad didn't cost the lives of 3,000-5,000 G.I.s. Saddam was unseated with blitzkrieg speed. There were no massive refugee flows. The conflict didn't spill over into neighboring countries. No conflagration tantamount to civil war has occured to date. The Turks haven't gotten too panicky about Kurdish de facto deep autonomy (yet). Iran, in deep meddle-mode to be sure--has not full-blown scuttled developments in the Shi'a south. In the region generally, the House of Saud has not been replaced by UBL adherents--and no U.S. troops remain in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan and Egypt remain, on the whole, pretty stable. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict grinds on-but the Iraq war hasn't worsened the moribund peace process in any significant manner.

All this aside, and most important of all, Iraq is (if in tortuous fashion) moving towards elections come January. We do not yet know if certain parts of the Sunni Triangle will be able to participate in the voting. We can be fearful of the perils of a crude Shia majoritarianism emerging through the ballot-box--especially if many Sunnis are denied (or simply cannot) vote. Kurdistan remains, in many ways, the sleeper issue--we shouldn't forget it too can explode given Turkey's interests there. And yet. As with Afghanistan, it appears a somewhat viable election may occur in Iraq shortly--a country that had been under the yoke of a brutal, neo-Stalinist thug for three decades. This would be an historic accomplishment by any standard, would it not? One we could be proud of--provided that the election, at least in large part, was viewed by a large majority of Iraqis as enjoying a real imprimatur of legitimacy.

Why We Went In

B.D. supported the war in Iraq mostly on traditional realist grounds. Post 9/11, I believed that Saddam posed a uniquely worrisome threat. Unlike N. Korea and Iran--Saddam had started two regional wars and had used WMD against his own people in odious fashion. Perhaps he was not a madman, but he certainly was a volatile strategic blunderer (more than the Mullahs in Teheran and more than Kim Jong Il). To be sure, we had a massive intelligence failure, but the DCI told the sitting President that the case that Iraq had an active WMD program was a "slam dunk." Did Cheney exagerrate the nuclear angle? Yes, and he should have come more clean during the postmortem. But did POTUS purposefully lie to the American people on the WMD issue? I don't think a judicious examination of the evidence bears that out.

Regardless, and after 9/11, I was concerned that Saddam, inspired by UBL's dramatic success in New York, would transfer biological or chemical weaponry to a terrorist group like al-Qaeda. Was I a simpleton or a hysteric to have been so concerned given Saddam's unique track record sketched above? Given a decade of obstruction and obfuscation--flouting well over a dozen U.N. resolutions since 1991? Given that the U.K. and U.S. were involved in military operations there through the 90s? Given that the avowed policy of the Clinton team was "regime change"? Well, no, I don't think I was.

But there is more than all this, of course. 9/11 was what Hegel might have called a world-historical event. There was something prima facie epoch-shaping that happened when those two Towers crumbled to the ground. Expressions of regret poured in from all over the world. Even the Mayor of Teheran extended condolences to Rudy. Saddam, of course, extended no such regrets. But why should he have? After all, while not reportedly sharing any collaborative, operational links with al-Qaeda--he was (to a fashion) linked to them in esprit--given his use of chemical weaponry against his own population, his support to the families of suicide bombers in Israel (a cheap propaganda ploy, but revealing nonetheless of his view of how to reward those who might purposefully go about massacring innocent civilians), his harboring of Abu Nidal and other terror-masters in the past.

Nick Lemann has an interesting New Yorker piece in the current edition (of which more in another post) entitled "Remember the Alamo--How George Bush Reinvented Himself." In it, he quotes Richard Haass (formerly Head of Policy Planning at State, now President of the Council on Foreign Relations). In a revealing passage, Lemann asked Haass why we went to war in Iraq:

I will go to my grave not knowing that. I can't answer it. I can't explain the strategic obsession with Iraq--why it rose to the top of people's priority list. I just can't explain why so many people thought this was so important to do. But if there was a hidden reason, the one I heard most was that we needed to change the geopolitical momentum after 9/11. People wanted to show that we can dish it out as well as take it. We're not a pitiful helpless giant. We can play offense as well as defense. I heard that from some people. Of course, some would say that Afghanistan was enough. There are two what-ifs. One, what if there had been no 9/11--would it have happened? I think the odds are slightly against it, even though some people were for it. Two, what if we knew there were no weapons of mass destruction? I'd say no. But the urge to do this existed pre-9/11. What 9/11 did was change the atmosphere in which decisions were made. The only serious argument for war was weapons of mass destruction. [emphasis added]

Lemann portrays Haass as a mega-Iraq war skeptic--which I'm not so sure is the case. Like many of us, of course, Haass is dismayed by the dismal post-war planning. But, even if Haass is skeptical, there is something to this argument of regaining "the geopolitical momentum." Not like some mammoth, clumsy, wounded animal lashing out blindly at all comers. But in purposeful manner, in terms of attempting the hard, generational task of moving the Middle East towards modernity (the epicenter of the radical terrorist threat we face). Given a confluence of factors too lengthy to go through in any more detail here--Iraq became the place where that effort was launched. Now we must determine who between Kerry and Bush can best lead us forward from this difficult and so important place we find ourselves.

The Existential Stakes

Today, we are at war with radical Islam. Not Islam writ large, mind you. Not all Arabs either. There is too much tut-tutting about all those towel-headed Mohameds in large swaths of the right blogosphere. I find such rhetoric repulsive and worthy of our worst racist tendencies. But, that said, we face a mortal enemy in the face of radical Islam. Its tentacles are spread in far-flung fashion; from Jakarta to Casablanca; from Bali to Madrid. Those who killed 3,000 in New York on 9/11 are only too happy to kill 3 million at their first opportunity. We can, unfortunately, not yet be confident that the 21st century will be less bloody than the 20th.

A few days after 9/11, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

THIS ISN'T TERRORISM, IT'S WAR: Besides, this enemy is not simply a band of thugs, but several regimes that aid and abet these people and have celebrated this atrocity. These regimes have declared war on the United States, and it is time we repay the favor. The precedent is not the Sudan under Clinton or even Libya under Reagan. Under Clinton, these regimes were encouraged. Under Reagan, they were scared, but, under Reagan, they had not yet launched this kind of war. Now they have - even daring to target one of the citadels of our democracy: the White House. This is the most grievous declaration of war against America in history. What Wright hasn't absorbed, I think, is that we are no longer fighting terrorism. We are at war. And we are not at war with any old regime or even a handful of terrorists. We are at war with an evil that will only grow unless it is opposed with all the might at our command. We must wage that war with a ferocity that doesn't merely scare these monsters but terrifies them. Merely murdering bin Laden is a laughable response. If this new war can be waged with partners - specifically Russia, NATO, China - so much the better. But if not, the United States must act alone - and as soon as we can be assured of complete success. There are times when it is not inappropriate or even immoral to use overwhelming power merely to terrify and avenge. Read your Machiavelli. We must shock them more than they have shocked us. We must do so with a force not yet seen in human history. Then we can begin to build a future of greater deterrence. I repeat: we are not responding to terrorism any more. We are at war. And war requires no restraint, simply massive and unanswerable force until the enemy is not simply defeated but unconditionally destroyed. To hesitate for fear of reprisal is to have capitulated before we have even begun. I don't believe Americans want to capitulate to anyone. The only question is whether we will get the leadership now to deal with this or whether we will have to endure even worse atrocities before a real leader emerges. [emphasis added]

Now three years on, that question remains as critical as it did back then.

Bush's Record

George Bush, in my view, understands the nature of the evil we are combating. He understands it deep in his gut, to his very core, and this is why I will be voting for him in November. To be sure, I am voting for him with many reservations (of which more below); but I am confident and, indeed, proud of my vote because Bush's intellectual firmament has grasped this essential truth.

A few days after 9/11; Bush movingly went to Ground Zero and rallied a nation. This was critical to our national fabric, and I will always honor him for it. To be frank and more revelatory than I may like on this blog--I still get emotional when I remember that day. To the grotesquely cheap Mooreian attacks regarding the "My Pet Goat" readings at the Florida school--I say remember the moment Bush grabbed that megaphone and rallied a profoundly wounded nation.

Bush then proceeded to go about methodically gaining Pakistan's vital support in the fight against the Taliban--through the hugely admirable efforts of Colin Powell. Next, Bush swept the Taliban from power--denying al-Qaeda their key state sanctuary. Kerry now trots out the Tora Bora meme-that we let UBL get away because we "outsourced" the effort to local Afghans. This is a risible argument, as any serious observer well realizes. The Tora Bora mountain range is massive--and even if we had sent in many tens of thousands of our troops (as if Al Gore would have done so; a laughable notion as well)--there were myriad escape routes. Not only that, as recently pointed out in an op-ed in the WSJ, local tribesmen might well have taken up arms against us in the foothills before we even got to the die-hard al-Qaeda fighters--should such a massive insertion of U.S. fighting forces have occured. And, besides, we are not even sure UBL was even in Tora Bora during that time frame. No, more realistically, better to conclude: thank God Bush was Commander in Chief during the Afghan operation rather than Al Gore! Can you imagine a Les Aspin type planning such an operation?

Out of the rubble of Ground Zero and through the advent of Afghanistan--the Bush doctrine was born--the policy that states that nations that harbor terrorists would be held just as culpable by the United States as the terrorists themselves. Afghanistan, of course, was the wholly uncontroversial enunciation of this doctrine--and Iraq the much more controversial one. But, whatever you make of Iraq, can anyone now deny that the U.S. takes the threat of terror with the utmost seriousness? Have we not proven that we are not a paper tiger? That we will fight valiantly and hard in pursuit of our security and our values? This too, is part of Bush's record--no matter how often it is poo-pooed by cynics who think this is all dumb Simian-like macho talk that doesn't matter. I'm sorry, but it very much does. To deny this is to deny reality.

Of course, there is much that is troubling about Bush's performance during his first term. Front and center, in my view, was the fact that we never sent enough troops into Iraq to create secure conditions. From this, many troubles stemmed. Massive looting. Huge resentment of an occupier that couldn't (some there, given to conspiracy, think purposefully wouldn't) stabilize the country they occupied. And, of course, Abu Ghraib--a deep stain on our national reputation that floored me.

(Note there is a dirty little secret about Abu Ghraib that often passes unmentioned. I recently spoke to a former U.S. diplomat who travels to the Middle East often. I asked him about the impact of Abu Ghraib there. To be sure, it didn't help. But the sad reality is that many Arabs, so accustomed to their myriad mukhabarat-style secret polices and organs of repression--weren't, finally, that shocked by Abu Ghraib. The real issues that infuriate Arabs, make no mistake, are 1) their frustration with the repressive polities they inhabit, with the attendant atrophied economies and 2) the perceived humiliation born of the Arab-Israeli conflict).

In short, Bush's record has been mixed--but he gets the existential stakes at play. I would only vote for Kerry if: a) he got the stakes too and b) assuming "a", that I thought he would prosecute the war in materially more effective fashion. I don't believe either.

Kerry Doesn't Get the Stakes

I don't believe, in his gut, Kerry believes that we face an existential challenge with regard to the war on terror. How else to explain the now famous quote in the Matt Bai article:

We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.'

Or, in the same article, we are told that Kerry told Bai that 9/11 didn't change him. Look, I'm not one of those crazies who caught the fever after 9/11. We all know some of these people. A switch kinda clicked upstairs and it's all gung-ho, jingo off to Mecca we go--us against a billion Muslims. But I do believe, as I said earlier in this post, that 9/11 was a world historical event. It sure changed me. It quashed the Fukuyama end of history thesis (the resurgence of nationalism in the Balkans had gone some way towards doing so already, in my view). It heralded the beginning of a new, perilous era. You're effing right it changed me. How about you?

There's more, of course, re: why I'm dubious that Kerry gets the stakes. Put aside whether Allawi's speech to Congress was vetted by the White House. It was a moving, important speech nonetheless. And Iraq is the most important conflict we face now--a critical component of the generational challenge we face to modernize the Middle East--so as to reduce the pool of prospective fanatics who will adhere to a radicalized Islamic vision. But Kerry denigrated Allawi's speech--all but calling him a liar. I'm sorry, but that's just not serious. Actually, it's worse than not serious--it's immensely irresponsible and, yes, dangerous.

Kerry also suffers from something of a Vietnam syndrome. I, like Robert Kagan has written, believe that Kerry has a deep distrust and suspicion regarding exerting American power overseas. He voted against Gulf War I, for Pete's sake (Saudi oil supplies likely to be controlled by Iraq!?! Hey, who cares!). His disregard for such a vital strategic interest has been replicated when confronted by humanitarian tragedies too. See his vote against 'lift and strike' in Bosnia (Laura Rozen would like you to forget it). Kerry says he would never send our boys into war unless it is absoutely necessary. Well, what is absolutely necessary Senator? Really, what? Too little, in Kerry's worldview, I'm afraid.

Nor am I persuaded that Kerry, tactically, will prove more impressive than Bush (even if, for argument's sake, we assumed he got the stakes). Again, from the Bai article:

We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days,'' Kerry told me during a rare break from campaigning, in Seattle at the end of August. ''And that's all about your diplomacy.''

When I suggested that effecting such changes could take many years, Kerry shook his head vehemently and waved me off.

''Yeah, it is long-term, but it can be dramatically effective in the short term. It really can be. I promise you.'' He leaned his head back and slapped his thighs. ''A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly.

''I know Mubarak well enough to know what I think I could achieve in the messaging and in the press in Egypt,'' Kerry went on. ''And, similarly, with Jordan and with King Abdullah, and what we can do in terms of transformation in the economics of the region by getting American businesspeople involved, getting some stability and really beginning to proactively move in those ways. We just haven't been doing any of this stuff. We've been stunningly disengaged, with the exception of Iraq.

It's always like this with Kerry, isn't it? I know Gerard. And Jacques too. We get along! There will be a summit. I've got a plan! We'll agree it amidst all the cheery summitry. Paris, perhaps? Adoring crowds will crowd the Champs for a glimpse of me! Yes, we'll all get along better if I win. After all, I know what really makes key leaders tick. How to get things moving. And we need to "do" better diplomacy. Oh, Hosni and I are buddies too--so Middle East democratization will go swimmingly should I win--even if I pull our boys out of Iraq to remedy that noxious backdoor draft thang.

Let's be honest with ourselves here, OK? Kerry has shown astonishingly little by way of real, viable policy alternatives. He's brought almost nothing new to the table. To be clear. His NoKo policy is a replication of the failed Clinton policy. The only difference between Bush and Kerry on Iran policy is that Bush will play a bit harder when it gets to the U.N. and, if Kerry wins, John Bolton won't be around to bitch about it all. On Iraq, it's all: I'll reconstruct better!; I'll train better!, I'll run the elections better! and so on. Would that Kerry had, rather than signal retreat, told us he would send more troops if needed to decisively signal to our foes we will not abandon our effort there. Instead, it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.

How about the critical Arab-Israeli conflict? Kerry has big, bold plans, I've heard! Look, would I prefer that Bush more loudly proclaimed that Gaza first didn't mean Gaza last? That talk in Israeli political circles that a Gaza withdrawal means the U.S. will let the Israelis keep hold of the West Bank be more staunchly hushed? Oh, maybe. But it's an election year. And Sharon needs to get rightist Likudniks on board--so give him some breathing room to at least pull off Gaza. Our bright Ambassador to Tel Aviv (Dan Kurtzer) and Asst Sec of State for Near Eastern Affairs (Bill Burns) are admirably plugging away--trying to at least have a symbolic withdrawal from some West Bank settlements take place concomittantly with any Gaza withdrawal. Such linkage could then be used to spearhead some forward movement on the roadmap later on. The peace processers are still at work.

Would John Kerry handle this differently? There is talk of a special envoy, perhaps Clinton (who flubbed Camp David II by not backstopping with Fahd and Mubarak re: how far Arafat could go on Jerusalem concessions). Should we again cheapen the Presidential coin with late night poring over map sessions around the empty pizza delivery boxes? More 15 hour days at Sheperdstown? No folks, Kerry offers nothing compelling on how to resuscitate the peace process. Indeed, he (and, most theatrically Edwards, during his debate with Cheney) disingenuously play the 'we will be better friends to Israel than the Bush team' card.

Let me also say this. A Bush II will not be a Bush I repeat. By that, I guess, I mean that we are not rushing into Iran or Syria. The neo-cons, of course, have lost a lot of street cred. Bush might be stubborn and not wont to admit mistakes. But he's not an idiot. He knows, say, a land war in Iran would be folly. And he knows he has gotten a lot of bogus advice from the Pentagon. Bush is a hard competitor, indeed he's ruthlessly competitive. Above all, he's a survivor. He will be getting advice from a broader swath of advisors in his second term, I trust.

The Kerry team? Holbrooke would be strong--but the sub-Holbrooke swaths of Foggy Bottom, I fear, would be weak. Despite the major errors in the post-war planning of this Administration, I have more faith in the foreign policy aptitude of a Bush II team than a Kerry I. You can disagree, but I think you'd be wrong--even if you think Susan Rice and Jamie Rubin are the greatest things since sliced bread.

Substance Over Form, Please!

Finally, a quick point related to the below from Dan Drezner (explaining why he will likely vote Kerry):

Given the foreign policy stakes in this election, I prefer a leader who has a good decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I don't like, over a leader who has a bad decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I do like.

Boy Dan, you couldn't be more wrong in my book. This line of argument might have flyed in the 90's--but I think it's a dangerous outlook in the post 9/11 world. Perhaps if the policy making process were fatally flawed--I'd agree. But any occasional NSC breakdowns in brokering a coherent policy on Iran, NoKo, the Arab-Israeli peace process--while they have bothered me much over the past years--I must nevertheless conclude that such issues pale in comparison with the specter of a commander-in-chief who would view terror as something merely constitutive of a "nuisance" to be managed in routine fashion.

This isn't just semantic nit-picking. Kerry has hinted (often without realizing it), and too often in my view, that he would go back to the days that terrorism was treated as basically a law enforcement issue. He and his supporters will vehemently dispute this, of course. But, if you read between the lines, there's a lot there to make you strongly suspect that to be the case. In my view, that's just not acceptable in a post 9/11 world. And, more important, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the existential stakes at play given the long-term nature of the struggle we face against radical Islam.

This isn't just a matter of "foreign policy instincts." It's a matter of core conviction regarding the nature of the struggle we find ourselves in. About the broad direction that American foreign policy will move in vis-a-vis responding to these very real challenges during the next so critical years. Give me, even with flawed policy execution, a leader who gets the stakes deep in his gut--above one who will have a better process (which, incidentally, I doubt) but has shown (repeatedly) a worrisomely sanguine view of the perils we face at the present hour.

P.S. Drezner also writes: "If Bush gets re-elected, he and his team will view it as a vindication for all of their policy decisions to date. Whatever groupthink occurred in the first term would pale besides the groupthink that would dominate the second term."

Does Dan really believe that a Bush victory will have Doug Feith feeling "vindicated" so that group-think would prevail via some Libby-Bolton-Feith axis? Er, I think not. Nor do John Negroponte or Zal Khalilzad, I suspect. Regardless, some of these folks, I'd wager, aren't even going to be around in a Bush II.

MORE: Kerry's Senatorial work is being trotted out to make him appear almost eerily prescient re: the perils of non-state actors in terms of the terror threat. Matt Bai's piece is an (inadvertently) humorous example:

More senior members of the foreign-relations committee, like Joe Biden and Richard Lugar, were far more visible and vocal on the emerging threat of Islamic terrorism. But through his BCCI investigation, Kerry did discover that a wide array of international criminals -- Latin American drug lords, Palestinian terrorists, arms dealers -- had one thing in common: they were able to move money around through the same illicit channels. And he worked hard, and with little credit, to shut those channels down.

In 1988, Kerry successfully proposed an amendment that forced the Treasury Department to negotiate so-called Kerry Agreements with foreign countries. Under these agreements, foreign governments had to promise to keep a close watch on their banks for potential money laundering or they risked losing their access to U.S. markets. Other measures Kerry tried to pass throughout the 90's, virtually all of them blocked by Republican senators on the banking committee, would end up, in the wake of 9/11, in the USA Patriot Act; among other things, these measures subject banks to fines or loss of license if they don't take steps to verify the identities of their customers and to avoid being used for money laundering.

Through his immersion in the global underground, Kerry made connections among disparate criminal and terrorist groups that few other senators interested in foreign policy were making in the 90's. Richard A. Clarke, who coordinated security and counterterrorism policy for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, credits Kerry with having seen beyond the national-security tableau on which most of his colleagues were focused. ''He was getting it at the same time that people like Tony Lake were getting it, in the '93 -'94 time frame,'' Clarke says, referring to Anthony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser. ''And the 'it' here was that there was a new nonstate-actor threat, and that nonstate-actor threat was a blended threat that didn't fit neatly into the box of organized criminal, or neatly into the box of terrorism. What you found were groups that were all of the above.''

"Immersion in the global underground". Heh. Is that in Davos? With apologies to Mr. Bai--but this whole part of his article reeks of B.S. Contra Richard Clarke, I don't think John 'Nostradamus' Kerry was "getting it" in '93. This all smells like inspired spin to make Kerry seem like the right guy to go after all those non-state actor meanies. Don't believe the hype. The apercu that terrorists need money, regardless, isn't particularly breathtaking. And from investigating BCCI to prosecuting a war against al-Qaeda--well, they're different kettle of fish entirely. Relatedly, the argument that the Bushies are still Politburo-watching and state-actor obsessed is just bunk. Certainly, it's now a moot point post 9/11. No one in the Bush administration can be accused, certainly at this juncture, of ignoring the perils of non-state actors. Oh, note, pace Clarke, that groups like al-Qaeda are both terrorist and criminal groupings (certainly let's never be accused of putting things in overly neat boxes!). So, er, make sure you've got process servers ready too in case court summons need to be served up in Wazirstan...I'm being facetious, of course. But I think you get my point.

UPDATE: Dan Drezner (whose post reminded me how to spell Richard Haass' name--I always drop that second "s"!), remains "unconvinced" that "Bush's foreign policy has been a greater success than commonly thought, and [he's] not convinced that [Bush] would ever be able to recognize the need for policy change." But hey, he's a tad more concerned about Kerry's "bad foreign policy instincts." Progress!

And blogger Eric Martin, who often keeps me on my toes, takes me to task too. His thoughts are well-worth reading.

STILL MORE (and with apologies for the simply ridiculous length of this post): David Adesnik, my first blog-friend (on the basis of a quick coffee in my London offices many moons ago!), looks set to vote Kerry. I won't pretend that Drezner and Adesnik's likely votes for Kerry don't give me pause--they are two of the very brightest foreign policy minds in the blogosphere. But I think Drezner, among other things, is too caught up in process; and I think Adesnik is overly generous to Kerry re: the latter's commitment to democracy.

After all David, this is pretty thin gruel you serve up, no?

Finally, I believe there is an ethical core to Kerry's foreign policy that can be put into the service of democratization. In the 1980s, Kerry's concern for human rights led him to denounce Reagan's support for anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua known as 'contras'.

Indeed David--in the very post announcing Kerry as his likely choice--is forced to concede in the very next sentence:

Like his fellow Democrats, Kerry failed to recognize that the price of abandoning the contras was the destruction of any hope for democratic reform in Nicaragua. On a fundamental level, liberal Democrats opposed American intervention in other nations' domestic affairs, even if those nations were being held hostage by Communists.

Le plus ca change David. Kerry and Co. (ie, broad non-Lieberman swaths of the Democrat party), in my view, do not truly care about whether Iraq becomes a democratic polity or not. Now, of course, you might argue that Bush is so 'in the bubble', stubborn, clueless, and divorced from reality that--even though he might care more about forging democracy there--it doesn't mean squat on the ground because he's incapable of addressing reality square in the face.

But balancing Bush's worrisome tendency to be something of a 'Propellor President' (as Sully puts it); against Kerry's lack of true committment to forging democracy in Iraq--well, I come out on the Dubya side of the fence. Not least because I think that Bush is capable of staring reality in the face and making mid-course policy adjustments. Indeed, he has repeatedly done so in Iraq (Fallujah, Brahimi-brought-on-board, how Sadr was handled, ditching Garner for Bremer, empowering Negroponte and State over civies at the Pentagon, and more).

Posted by Gregory at October 17, 2004 10:26 AM
Comments

Thank you. This expresses so much of what I feel. I really wish a few more people(like Andrew) would be more realistic with Kerry's history and more willing to concede that Bush is trying to correct the mistakes that have happened. Your article sure makes a compelling case for it.

Posted by: Mark at October 17, 2004 03:17 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

It seems that if you repeat a phrase often enough, it becomes accepted wisdom. I've heard everyone (BD included) say that Bush "understands" or "gets" the stakes in the GWOT. I see no such evidence. Victory in this war requires diplomatic deftness and, above all, ideological subtlety, because we must convince the Islamic world's moderates and fence-sitters that we are on their side and that they are on ours, that our goal is to promote their aspirations, not impose them. As I see it, the invasion of Iraq has made the lives of the moderates and fence-sitters immeasurably more difficult, now and far into the future. Military power must play an ancillary role (Army SF is essential in this regard); currently in Iraq it is killing people and breaking things as fast as we are trying to rebuild them. We must reserve military power for terrorists, not innocent city-dwellers in Iraq. (Killing innocents is most assuredly not our intention, but it is an outcome of our policies in Iraq and the fact that we have placed the Army and Marine Corps in an impossible bind; the more innocents who die as a result of collateral damage, the more we radicalize former neutrals -- neutrals whose favor we desperately need.)

The problem with the Bush approach is its Cold War nostalgia: states determine everything, Great Power politics will decide all, et cetera. (Witness their obsession with missile defense!) Al Qaeda has shown that it does not need states, only individuals within states. The Bush people do not grasp this difference. I think Kerry does, but I'll reserve judgment.

As for North Korea, as much blame lies with Republican conservatives in Congress and the South Korean government as it does with Clinton and North Korea (the former's refusal to fund the light-water reactors as just one example). Clinton essentially admitted that the AF outcome was flawed, but he also did declare, and kept the U.S. military on notice, that the reopening of Yongbyon and the reprocessing of the spent fuel rods would mean that the "red line" would be crossed and the U.S. would strike. That kind of ambiguity kept North Korea off balance and forced them to travel the underground, HEU route. (The difference between plutonium and HEU is akin to that of buying a new car straight from the dealership, or going to the junkyard and building the same brand new car from scratch). The Bush Male Crush Posse at National Review and elsewhere calls this "kicking the can down the road", but to quote Matt Hooper dressing down Quint in the movie "Jaws": "You got any better suggestions?!" They would have done nothing differently, or if they had, then Seoul would now be a barren wasteland and many thousands of American troops would be dead. The goal in Korea is to avoid that outcome. Bush has done it so far by making the situation only more unstable.

Kerry understands that nuclear proliferation is the civilized world's highest security priority. Surely he can improve on W's performance in this arena, which amounts to nothing more than saying, "We will not allow rogue states to get nuclear weapons -- that is until they get nuclear weapons." I grant you tha Pakistan is a supremely difficult issue, but tossing out blatant lies about how A.Q. Khan has been "brought to justice" brings little comfort.

As always, BD offers smart, provocative thoughts. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: TT at October 17, 2004 04:27 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I agree with BD and his case for Bush.

I have listened to Kerry and what I hear is Carter/Clinton era speeches. That frightens me!. If Kerry gets elected, he will have combination of Carter and Clinton personality and characters back to the White House and that will set America 25 years back and not forward. I have not heard any new ideas and/or philosophy from that group regarding the post-cold period. They just don't get the new world danger! Kerry compares this war to Vietnam and that show his depth of his vision. The danger is real, I and many people who lived in the Middle East have felt it for many year and I hope American people will take it seriously too. I believe Bush Inc.'s vision is the right one, it may not be perfect but it is a huge leap from where we have been for the last 20 years. We have to get out of the cold war mentality and use new strategy when dealing with new world danger, Islamo-fascism.

Kerry does not understand Middle East the same way Carter did not get it.
Iranian revolution was hijacked by Mullahs thanks to the Carter administration. Democrats at that time did not have the insight to Islamic movement mentality that had started in Egypt 5 years prior. Carter thought the Khomeni was a "Gandhi like" character that can be negotiated. The revolution started by mostly intellectuals and some communist movement student but ended with Mullahs . Iranian people, to this date, believe that America had a hand in pushing the religious group forward. Iranians were not at all fanatic Muslims and the nation was in a shock when they saw the Islamo-Fascist took the control and there were Arabs everywhere guarding the Mullahs during the first 6 months of revolution. Remember PLO's Arafat was the first foreign leader visiting Khomeni. People couldn't understand what was happing. Some foreign hand was involved since it happened too quickly. Carter used the same strategy as he used in Afghanistan and his strategy is to blame for this Islamic Jehad that we have now. If Carter had used "real force" in freeing hostages, the Islamic regime in Iran could not have survived this long. Carter kept thinking he should negotiate. F*(&$ negotiation is not a strategy!!!! Muslims never understood what negotiating is , let alone do it. Carter keep insisting on something they could not understand. Iranian were laughing at America and how powerless Carter was during the hostage crises. Kerry reminds my of Carter in many ways when he talks about how he would handle the terrorism differently!! If you don't use aggressive methods nothing else works with Muslim Fanatics.
If Bush loses, there will be dancing and Joy among the Fundamental Muslims around the world and Islamic terrorists will be more encouraged to proceed with their goals again. If Bush wins, they will see that he is being backed by his own people and American force will become real to them. Remember, Islam--fascist fear power only and I think Bush's strategy of supporting democratic movement across the world with tying the foreign aid to the human rights record is a good start. We need to give him a chance to get it done.

Sorry for the long comment, but as a Middle Eastern woman, I passionately think American foreign policy is finally getting IT with Middle East and I hope they will not lose the one man that changed the direction. Kerry wants to please the world and wants to negotiate and wants to wage a sensitive war. These are all Carter/Clinton language which Arabs and Muslims laugh at. Lets protect the American image by voting the right guy! Remember, if Kerry wins, he will use the same people who helped Clinton, Carter to form their disastrous foreign policies and that should make you worry.

Regards to all,
A Middle Eastern woman for Bush

Posted by: frieda at October 17, 2004 05:00 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Greg, I think you're mistaken if you think that Bush Round II would empower smart, reasonable people like you.

Remember, it was Dick Cheney's allies in the administration who are responsible for this. Bush didn't fire them, nor did he hold anyone of consequence's feet to the fire for this. Donald Rumsfeld is, apparently, the best Secretary of Defense America has ever had. Two of the leading candidates for Secretary of State are apparently Pauls Bremer and Wolfowitz, neither of which inspires a modicum of confidence. A third option is Condi Rice, who is chronically incapable of getting different agencies working towards a common policy. Rick Sanchez is getting his fourth star. Barbara Fast got promoted. The general who dreamed up using MPs to help "set the conditions" for interrogations in Guantanamo was sent to fix the problems in Iraq. A toadie has been put in charge of the CIA, not to fix our intelligence problems, but rather to ride herd on the groans of dissent coming out of Langley. And the man who wrote that "the power to set aside the law is inherent in the President" got rewarded with a plum judgeship.

I don't think any of this bodes well for a second term.

Posted by: praktike at October 17, 2004 06:00 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

B.D. is, as always, awesome. But I'll restrain myself in praising this excellent posting, and instead move on to a couple minor points.

I think Dennis Ross would be a good choice (and a more likely choice than Bill Clinton) for U.S. envoy for promoting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. B.D. is correct, in my opinion, that the Kerry-Edwards ticket has appealed to the AIPAC vote -- but the Clinton-Gore ticket appealed to the AIPAC vote in 1992, and then adopted a non-AIPAC policy once in office.

Posted by: Arjun at October 17, 2004 07:31 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I'm surprised the news media hasn't paid more attention to the last campaign in which John Kerry sought a new political office. That was in 1984, when Mr. Kerry, then Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, ran for the U.S. Senate.

In that campaign, Mr. Kerry adopted an extremely irresponsible position opposing the Reagan Administration's military buildup. I don't know whether that alleged John Kerry 1984 campaign flyer (the one in which the Kerry campaign decried increased military spending and specifically proposed slashing or eliminating spending on several important weapons systems) is a fake document designed ex post facto on Microsoft Word. However, to my knowledge (please correct me if I'm wrong) nobody has ever denied that this was an actual John Kerry 1984 campaign flyer.

However, after John Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate, he voted for most military spending bills.

Here's the moral of the story: John Kerry's campaign rhetoric in 1984 was irresponsible, but once he was elected to office, his actions were responsible. He panders as a candidate, but he acts responsibly as a public servant.

It is my hope (and if I'm wrong, it's too late, because I already voted for Mr. Kerry) that Mr. Kerry's actions as U.S. President will be better than some of his campaign rhetoric as candidate for U.S. President would suggest.

Posted by: Arjun at October 17, 2004 08:06 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I hope I can get a transcript of Bob Schrum on Meet the Press today, because his statements contained a good example of what I mean when I complain about the Kerry campaign's irresponsible rhetoric.

Mr. Schrum complained that warlords were ruling large sections of Afghanistan and that Afghan heroin production was skyrocketing. Then he noted that the Bush Administration was bragging about new schools and about Afghan women's participation in the election. Then he contrasted these efforts with the Bush Administration's alleged lack of interest in schools and women's rights right here at home where we belong in the good old United States of America.

Mr. Schrum, how incoherent (and deplorably demagogic) can you get??? Is the Bush Administration paying too much attention to Afghanistan, or too little? You can't have it both ways!

Posted by: Arjun at October 17, 2004 08:59 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Thirty years of American foreign policy had clearly demonstrated that America was a muscle-bound but irresolute and uncommited superpower. America was the professional boxer who could be taunted at will by street punks because "it would be criminal for the professional to strike an amateur". The half-measure foreign policy of the US was seen as weakness.

Saddam's Iraq gave every Islamist, warlord, drug runner and criminal organization in the world hope. Saddam stood up to the US and the international community for 12 years and nothing of substance happened. Saddam saluted America and the world with his middle finger. This defiance emboldened Islamists to the point that they believed they could attack the WTC, the Pentagon and the Whitehouse or Capitol with impunity. What would the US do? Lob a few cruise missiles and bitch?

Bush and associates got it right. Removing the Taliban and killing Al Qaida was a necessary tactical decision. Deposing Saddam was a critical strategic move. It signaled that America considered this war an existential issue, that America was willing to commit blood and treasure and that America would no longer ignore terror enabling states just because they were small or weak and America was a 600 pound gorilla.

Arm chair generals can sit and muse about the tactical failures with near perfect hindsight. What is important is the strategic decisions. Bush and company excelled in this regard.

Kerry is just too desparate to get elected and has been on the wrong side of almost every issue for thirty years. His actions have demonstrated that he has no core convictions, except uncertainty. He just doesn't trust America, or Americans for that matter. For Kerry, tis better to trust the UN, France or anyone else when it comes to policy matters.

I'll vote for Bush because Kerry would get me and my family killed.

Posted by: lugh lampfhota at October 17, 2004 10:18 PM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I'm a 4th generation Democrat, and I agree with you - Bush is better than Kerry.

But... are you paid by the word?
'Cause you write like the Dickens
(who WAS paid by the word).

The case is very simple:

The Jihadoterrorists declared war on us.
We either fight back or lose.

Kerry is - and has been HIS WHOLE LIFE - a dove:
he was for the nuclear freeze; and he opposed to EVERY new weapons system; and opposed to EVERY intervention of the USA from Vietnam to Iraq 1991. (Saddam would still be in Kuwait if Kerry had his way!)

He ONLY supported Clinton's Serbian War because Clinton was a Democrat. His 2002 vote FOR the Iraq 2003 War WAS LIKEWISE AN ABERRATION.

Everyone who believes - as I do - that we must fight back -- that the world changed on 9/11/01 -- MUST vote for Bush.

What is more: there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in Kerry's ENTIRE SENATE CAREER that demonstrates he is a leader on ANYTHING. There is not a single law or resolution of any import with his name on it.
AND: he's NEVER EVER HELD ANY leadership position in his Senate Caucus. I guess his fellow Senators never thought much of him as a leader.

KERRY: a mediocre Senator, and a DOVE trapped in a 9/10/01 fantasy.

BUT IT GETS WORSE: his domestic policies are PRE-REGANITE --EVEN PRE-CLINTONIAN - he actually favors higher taxes and a bigger government role in the economy, and LESS free trade.

Kerry is as WRONG for 2004 as he was from 1966-2001.

Kerry: the wrong candidate running in the wrong place, for the wrong job, at the wrong time.

Posted by: dan at October 18, 2004 12:49 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

A well articulated, evenly balanced and conscientiously and intellectually cohering summary of all the most salient concerns.

There have been learning curves that were insufficiently grasped and mistakes in some planning (especially so, however, when viewed with the advantage of hindsight), AG and post-war planning most obviously. But when all appearances indicate the President gets the existential threat, short and long term, when he seemingly senses the epochal shift and corresponding need for realignments and when he fundamentally rightly assesses the overarching, long view (the need for a shift in the geopolitical center of gravity or "momentum") while J. Kerry seemingly does not, then, if it even needs to be said, that is absolutely pivotal and basic. That is the crux of the matter, especially so at this still relatively early stage in the overall War on Islamofascism (with concomitant global problems such as N. Korea, potential augmentation of WMD proliferation and access, etc.), likely to be a decades long conflict, according to most assessments.

In contrast with Sullivan more recently, Drezner has always appeared to be an honest broker. Yet in this instance the inescapable impression is one of a far too facile rationale, almost to the point where it sounds more like an ad hoc contrivance than an attempt to fully come to terms with what is more important vs. what is less important, both long term and short term, while balancing out the realist vs. idealist motivations within that overall scope.

Posted by: Michael B at October 18, 2004 01:21 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

"George Bush, in my view, understands the nature of the evil we are combating."

The why the hell is he so weak on terrorism and our national security? He was weak in Afghanistan, letting the bad guys get away, he's been equally impotent in Iraq.

This guy was desperate to get us into Iraq, and he's managed it terribly. I can't trust him to keep us safe, not one bit.

I'd rather roll the dice with Kerry then be guaranteed more profound weakness from Bush.

Posted by: Skip at October 18, 2004 03:42 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

It seems to me that the term "existential threat", is being thrown around very loosely. Biological and chemical weapons don't fit the bill. Nuclear weapons do, but there was not one piece of credible evidence that Iraq was going to acquire any. A general threat from terrorism/Islamofascism? Saddam-al Qaeda links have been discredited. Special forces were diverted from Afghanistan to prepare for the Iraq war. I think it is narrow-minded to say that the fear produced from our military ousting of Saddam outweighs the hatred produced from such a large deployment in the Middle East. Besides, how much fear is there now that our military is over-extended?

I also think that "geopolitical momentum" is a empty term. What does that really mean? It seems to me that we have weakened our position vis-a-vis Iran, a genuinely growing nuclear threat. Our military is now much less of a threat to Iran now, and the chaos of Iraq gives Iran an opportunity to expand their influence.

Posted by: Eric Slusser at October 18, 2004 04:20 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I have to agree with an earlier comment; I frankly don't see any evidence that Bush "get's it" when it comes to terrorism and security. being resolute is fine, but to resolutely pursue a strategic blunder like invading Iraq absolutely disqualifies one from leadership in my book.

If the goal of the Iraq adventure was to "change the geopolitical momentum" I suppose that has been accomplished, but unfortunately the change has not been to America's advantage. We have gone from a world where "we are all Americans now" was the overwhelming reaction to 9-11, to a world where America is isolated and increasingly held in contempt by even former allies. The GWOT cannot be successfully fought by America's overstretched military alone.

John Kerry does appear to understand what's at stake far better than Mr Bush.

Posted by: A Hermit at October 18, 2004 04:24 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I read on praktike's weblog (which is extremely interesting and informative, but a little hard to find) that almost all al Qaeda experts believe that the invasion of Iraq was of benefit to al Qaeda (presumably in terms of popular support, which leads to recruitment and refuge).

I believe that these experts are correct. I'll even agree with the Democrats that the invasion of Iraq has therefore made us "less safe" than we were immediately prior to the invasion of Iraq. (Sorry, I won't buy the argument that we're less safe than 3 years ago. Remember Afghanistan, formerly an al Qaeda terrorist sanctuary?) However, 1) this does not prove that the Iraq invasion was inherently wrong, or that it was a fatal distraction from the war on al Qaeda terrorism. To paraphrase what Vladimir Lenin said about the New Economic Plan, sometimes you take one step backwards in order to take two steps forward. We're asking whether we're safer because it's election time, but shouldn't we also be asking whether we WILL be safer 20 or 30 years from now?

And 2) even if the Iraq invasion was inherently wrong, it still doesn't make any sense to abandon the mission of stabilization and democratization. Such an abandonment would obviously strengthen al Qaeda recruitment far more than the invasion of Iraq ever did! I don't believe that Mr. Kerry wants to abandon that mission. (If he does, then I made a mistake when I voted for Mr. Kerry on Thursday.) Still, when Mr. Kerry campaigns on a claim that the President's policies will lead to a draft, one has to wonder, how does Mr. Kerry think his policies will be any different in that regard? What exactly does Mr. Kerry propose to do differently in Iraq that will make a draft less likely under a Kerry Administration than under a second term of the Bush Administration?

Posted by: Arjun at October 18, 2004 04:35 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Wait. No candidate in history has ever accurately represented his foreign policy views in an election (exhibit A: President George "we must pursue a more humble foreign policy" Bush). What's more, on the whole, I'm not convinced whether Bush or Kerry wins matters on foreign policy. Just look at Vietnam -- Nixon was elected on his "secret plan to end the war," and nothing changed.

With that in mind, how can you ignore the horrendous domestic record the President has established over the last four years, his lack of any new policy proposals, and his seeming obliviousness to any adverse economic conditions in the country?

Posted by: right at October 18, 2004 04:37 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Because Bush is so stupid, your worship of him has turned your brains to mush.

Let's talk about how Kerry's record will help us predict how he will lead if elected. To even engage in this line of thought is ridiculous. Look at Clinton from 1992 to 2000. If a person from 2000 were to tell a Republican in 1992 that Clinton would sign a welfare reform bill, put 100,000 cops on the street and sign DOMA, that person would be laughed at.

Do you honestly think John Kerry wants to be crushed the way Bill and Hillary were mercilessly crushed in 1994?

Do you not think Kerry as a 60's and 70's liberal learned from the crash and burn of liberalism throughout the 90's

Bush and the congressional GOP are behaving like liberals circa 1978. Just because they didn't study history doesn't mean Kerry didn't.

Conservatives in 2004 defined themselves throughout the 80's and again during the 94 revolution, long before anyone ever heard of Bush.

What is so laughable is how suddenly you have to be lock in step with this guy. Suddenly anything said from this administration defines conservatism.

500 billion prescription drug plan? 400 billion deficit? 120 billion and 1000 dead on a now discredited war 6000 miles away? What is this? How did these become attributable to a Republican administration and congress.

The GOP has failed miserably. It is time for a long vacation in the country. You need to think about how you went from 1994 to 2004.

Support Kerry because Democrats have learned their lesson the very hard way.

Posted by: Ken at October 18, 2004 04:44 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I completely agree with BD and will be voting for Bush because I do think he understands the stakes: Civilization versus medievalism. Our very survival is at stake. The terrorists only understand force and will take Kerry's "more sensitive war" on terrorism as carte blanche to blow up as many hotels and nightclubs as they see fit whenever they see fit. Personally I don't want the average street cop being in charge of dealing with terrorists. I want our powerful destroy the enemy with all due haste.

I don't see the need for "ideological subtelty" as TT suggests. On 9/11 we had war declared on us and it is not our job to be psychologists worrying about convincing the moderate Islamic fence sitters that we're on their side. After an unprovoked attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor we didn't waste breath with idle chatter toward moderate Japanese offering endless apologies for whatever we did wrong to deserve such an awful unprovoked attack on ourselves. We fought a bloody war and then incinerated 150,000 of them which brought a fast surrender. This new war, the GWOT, has no such visible enemy to incinerate. The stakes are high and the terrorists are willing to pay with their lives and I wholeheartedly think we should oblige them.

Posted by: Scott at October 18, 2004 04:55 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

errata:
line 6 I left out the word "military". "I want our powerful MILITARY to destroy..."

Posted by: Scott at October 18, 2004 04:57 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

1. Um, try cherry picking the Matt Bai article a bit more why don't you?
2. This is the best we can do to rationalize the atrocities we've committed in Iraq? "Hey, it's sad, but they're used to it?" Yikes! I beg of you to think of the implications of that moral equivalency (aside from it's convenience to your argument).
3. More post-facto reasoning: "Unlike N. Korea and Iran--Saddam had started two regional wars and had used WMD against his own people in odious fashion." But surely Iran and 'NoKo' (cute) have started wars, surely committing crimes against their own people in a fashion, odious or otherwise. Since when has the argument been "WMD against their own people"?
4. The Andrew Sullivan/Shock-and-Awe the terrorists plan isn't really working out is it? Two years, 1,000 plus Americans dead, more Iraqis, and EVERY DAY the Osama bin Laden gains converts. 75% of a few dozen Al Q. leaders circa 2001 (as per Rice on Meet the Press) dead says nothing of the undoubtedly expanding contingencies worldwide. Our imperial hubris is the best advertisement for terrorists.
5. Why do G.W. Bush's three years as a 'War President' garner such weighty significance, as if the years prior have evaporated? Shall we measure a half-baked Kerry bill from 1987 with G.W.'s drunken '80s as a whole? Try to remember that this guy was a joke--he couldn't even hold down a cushy board of directors job. And you are mining Kerry's past? I will not be wowed by W.'s on the job training, and Chaney's ventriloquism.

What a cult of personality he's pulled upon the public! He "understands it deep in his gut." Oi, your elaborate arguments spin upon such a tenuous pivot! The gut! This is where critical thinking, reason, and decency reside? John Kerry will surround his gut with thoughtful analysts and reasoned thinkers, not the lapdogs and yes men W. has. I love the microscope we've placed upon Kerry, as if we've seen a window into his soul, and the W.'s goes only as deep has his Billy Graham-strong armed conversion. Read the Times Mag today. Think twice. This guy is dangerous, messianic, and, I hate to say it, dim. You guys vote for the guy who thinks he's Moses, I'll pick the one like Paul.

Posted by: RW at October 18, 2004 05:06 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Why do I come away from this posting feeling certain that both you and your regular patrons love to read and reread your writings swooning over the sheer force of the logistics of your command of the English language? How very clever you are in that regard. How disappointing then to find that with all those words, your argument is undermined by it's ultimate reliance upon faith rather than facts in supporting your conclusions. Hmmmmm? Just like George and the gang's.

And what about GW's domestic policies in a second term? What about the Court? Tell me more please. What does your crystal ball, guiding light or whatever it is you are relying upon as the foundation of your rationale for your voting decision speak to you about that if Dubya were to be granted a second term?

I know details merely details. They're like facts, so messy. Why even bother?

I've decided to follow your lead, but upon asking the question and shaking my Magic 8 ball, I got the reply, Don't ask again, VOTE KERRY!

Posted by: Dave at October 18, 2004 05:08 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

This post is intriguing. Especially intriguing is the sub-rosa tension which I sense within it:

1. You believe that the "Bush Doctrine" makes sense.
2. You are dubious that George Bush is capable of effectuating the Bush Doctrine.
3. You have not yet admitted the second, even to yourself.

Posted by: David Sucher at October 18, 2004 05:16 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

As a resident of New York City, I have a very personal stake in the defeat of murderous Islamic extremism. So I don't think that this is a frivolous discussion, and I appreciate your intelligent argument. However, I couldn't disagree with your conclusions more.

I thought that conservatism was supposed to be suspicious of human endeavor, due to its unintended consequences (thinking about, say, Edmund Burke). And no endeavor has more unintended consequences than bombing and killing and occupying. Not that it should never be done -- I'm not a pacifist -- but given that World War One led to World War Two and the Holocaust or that the mere stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia inspired Usama Bin Laden's jihad, shoudln't prudence and planing and skepticism be watchwords for military action? (Colin Powell seems to understand this, at least).

With this background, reviewing what Bush has wrought, I find a chaotic Iraq with factional fighting, increasingly sophisticated armaments, a failed state with the potential to be a haven for terrorists, and attacks on American forces multiplying, not weakening. I find your catalog of things that could have gone but didn't to be cold comfort.

The Bush Administration's airheaded Chalabi-inspired optimism about post-war Iraq, its privatization mania that threw Iraqis out of work, and its willful alienation of the world have made the "post"-war situation immeasurably more difficult and dangerous than need have been.

What good is it to "understand the stakes" if you can't do the job?

Posted by: honestpartisan at October 18, 2004 05:34 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I'm sufficiently sure Kerry won't win I'll focus only on the case for Bush.
The question is whether we're safer today than we were when Bagdhad fell.
We know that sanctions had worked, Saddam's power had been greatly reduced from it's already low levels. We know that he had no nuclear program in progress. The danger Iraq presented was very much less than the danger from North Korea and Iran.
We know that Afghanistan's prospects are dicey still, and presumably could have been improved by the allocation of resources diverted to Iraq.
We know that Iraq has been so badly mismanaged that equipment useful in the construction of nuclear weapons has disappeared on a massive scale. Granted, it's not equipment that couldn't be stolen or purchased elsewhere. Yet it's true to say that under U.S. occupation Iraq has served to further the nuclear capabilities of unknown enemies more than it ever did in Saddam's day.
We know that Iran seems within a few years of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that Iraq, under any likely regime, will feel impelled (existentially, one might say) to acquire its own.
Most important, we know that the Islamist threat has scarcely diminished. "Loose nukes" have received second-priority attention and resources, yet they represent the capability Islamists most strongly desire. The ranks of Islamists have been increased by resentment against American conquest and occupation of an Arab land. (Bush apparently intends Americans to stay indefinitely at a dozen bases in Iraq, though I admit this presence seems to me unlikely to prove satisfactory to any likely regime.) And their ranks have also bourgeoned from the unexpected vulnerabilty of Amerian troops to continued attack and their inability thus far to suppress the insurgency. Indeed, today the extent of American control is sharply reduced from what it was when Baghdad fell. This apparent weakness seems bound to hearten Islamists and encourage them to join the jihad.
Djerejian thinks Bush has somehow signalled the U.S. is not a paper tiger. Whoever for a moment thought it was? Its capabilities are nonpareil and well known. But compare the perception of those capabilities before April 2003 and after the downward spiral of events to the point they've taken us today, where Americans can venture into several cities not at all and nowhere without appreciable risk. Who could suppose America is more feared or respected by its worst enemies today than then?
Djerejian hopes that somehow the administration will improve its performance in a second term. We can't know whether it will or not. We do know it could scarcely do more to increase the danger of attack than it has thus far.

Posted by: Worried at October 18, 2004 05:36 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Probably the single best argument in favor of voting for Bush I have yet seen. Yet, I remain unpersuaded. Essentially, the argument comes down to this: despite their monumental tactical mistakes (evident for all to see), we are to trust this same group, again, because the "street cred" of the neocons will stop them from pursuing another major land war?

I have to agree that Kerry's foreign policy instincts are questionable. But where I disagree is that high-level strategy should trump tactical competence. It really doesn't matter how correct or incorrect the strategic instincts of Bush might be if his administration persists in its head-in-the-sand policy of not questioning its past decisions and failing to pay attention to reality [B.D. deleted link here--i'm clueless how to fix and i'm told it's made the comment thread hard to navigate..apologies!] Bush II will not only be more of the same, but if he is reelected, he will no doubt see this as vindication --- and go forward with even more head-in-the-sand tactics.

I agree that the stakes are very high here, perhaps higher than Kerry realizes (though I think you are completely mischaracterizing the 'nuisance' quote --- note that he is not the first to use that language ... Republicans have used it as well). It is precisely because the stakes are so high, however, that we can't afford to have this incompetent bunch in office any longer.

Kerry will be forced to clean up the mess in Iraq ... and with a set of military and foreign policy advisers who actually do pay attention to reality, they can't do a worse job than this Administration has done so far.

Finally, one point about the strategic question of whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place --- since the WMD threat of Saddam was evidently bogus, I have to say your one remaining argument that this was a good idea, i.e., that we needed to "prove" that we can go on the offense --- strikes me as extremely weak. We were, prior to the Iraq war, the single undisputed military superpower in the world, feared by everyone --- we had won the Gulf War and the Kosovo war from the air, primarily, losing very few troops. We appeared nearly invincible. And now? Everyone knows that 90% of our army is tied up just trying (so far unsuccessfully) to pacify one country. We don't look nearly as fearsome nor nearly as invincible. Further, we could have used Afghanistan as our last major offensive war --- and success there would simply have bolstered our status in the world. Given the huge costs, politically, financially, and in lives, of this war, I can't see the "we needed to prove we were macho" argument as being remotely credible. We do need to be on the offense in this war, and the stakes are very high --- but we don't have unlimited resources. We have to attack judiciously. That's a central tenet of the realist approach --- I can't see how this war satisfies a sensible set of realist criteria for going to war.

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 05:38 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

These are some of the clearest, strongest, most cogent arguments on BOTH sides I've seen. A couple of small points:

-- Greg, you say "Saddam was unseated with blitzkrieg speed." But there is evidence in the Duelfer report and elsewhere that the rapid capitulation, followed by insurgency, was planned, that we were somewhat suckered. (I wrote a post on this, "Shock and . . . Aw, Shucks," that links to a story on the evidence.) The Baathists knew very well that they could not fight the U.S. military toe to toe. They also knew Iraq much better than we did (those of "us" who knew something about it were not listened to), and knew how to go underground and really sabotage the reconstruction phase, especially given our light commitment of troops.


-- Scott says "civilization vs. medievalism." But if you read Ron Suskind's article in today's Times Magazine (he's admittedly no objective source), you may see it more as two forms of medievalism duking it out. I worry a bit about the possible subliminal apocalyptic Christian strain in Bush's policy. If we succeed in planting a seedling of democracy in the Middle East, great. But if we fail, and the Middle East becomes a conflagration . . . hey, that's what the Bible said would happen, and it means Jesus is on the way. It's a fail-safe position that would indeed tend to make you less concerned about the consequences of mistakes.

-- The trouble with turning the GWOT into a conventional war is that, while it's much more satisfying -- at least we can DO SOMETHING visibly strong and scary -- the people we're killing are mostly not the hidden people who want to kill us. (Some of those people have been found by intelligence, international collaboration, and special ops, not by smart bombs.) That may indeed make even more people want to kill us. Self-fulfilling prophecy. There's also the problem that the people who want to kill us don't care if they die. How effectively can you terrify someone who doesn't fear death??

All that said, I still don't know who I'm voting for (and I'm voting in Florida, so it matters). But when I want to mull over the stakes, I'll come here to do it. Thanks to all.

Posted by: amba at October 18, 2004 05:38 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

If one of the goals in Iraq was to shock the enemy/terrorists and change the global dynamics of terrorism, I don't think that has happened. Saddam is in shock (probably already was from the looks of it), not Al-Qaeda.

Even if we establish a "democracy" in Iraq, I still don't see the hatred and anger subsiding that is generated by Fundamentalist Islam.

The post 9/11 worldwide compassion (also from moderate Muslims) towards the U.S. was an opportunity to try to combat the hatred behind terrorism at its roots. Instead we tried to lop of its head and replace it with a new one.

9/11 changed many attitudes towards international military action. I feel that the Bush-team has shown an extreme and damaging attitude. I believe that Kerry and the Democratic leadership has changed as well. Holding them to prior 9/11 votes seems unfair. I don't see where the Democrats have proven they don't understand the stakes. They have only voiced that stopping the growth of terrorism needs a long-term, realistic plan. We don't need plans/actions that are based on generating soundbites to win the next U.S. election.

Posted by: Nat at October 18, 2004 05:48 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

A thoughtful post with lots of interesting comments. I'd like to explain a post 9-11 world argument against the Bush administration, although it will take me a while to set it up.

There have been many studies from the field of risk assessment theory that show how people are horrible at assessing risk. In general, people greatly over-estimate the risk of emotionally-heavy events (e.g. being murdered in your home, your child getting poisoned candy at Halloween) and greatly under-estimate the risk of emotionally-neutral events (e.g. heart disease).

I bring the concept up for a few reasons. One, it explains why the Bush administration made the case for war that either were based in emotion (e.g. Iraq has significant contacts with al Qaeda/the implication that Iraq was responsible for 9/11) or rational arguments made in emotional terms (we don't the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud). They wanted to play on how emotion causes people to over-estimate risk, which in turn would increase the support of going to war.

Considering that they chose to make these arguments rather than one of a few more truthful but less emotional arguments, I don't see how anyone can argue that they didn't consciously try to mislead people and play on people's inherent weaknesses in reasoning. Now, you can argue they were right to do this because the ends justifies the means, but to say they didn't mislead people (even if was for a good purpose) doesn't hold up.

The second reason I bring the idea of risk assessment up is that it is the criterion that
*any* policy, from terrorism to health care, should be judged by. The primary question should always be, "With our limited resources, how can we do the best job reducing the risk the country and its citizens face?"

In this vein, there are a few questions critical to judging the administration's success against the war on terrorism. One, "Were the lives and resources spent in Iraq most effectively used there?" Two, "Was invading Iraq even the best way to improve our security, as opposed to invading another country like Syria or North Korea?" Three, "Was everything done to lessen security risks on other fronts, from guarding our ports to negotiating/pressuring other countries with WMDs?" And four, the most basic question of them all, "Did invading Iraq make America more or less safe?"

Just to touch briefly on the last question, let's say Saddam Hussein had some WMDs that are now gone. That means we went from Saddam Hussein possibly having WMDs along with the potential to give them to terrorists vs. the WMDs now spread across several countries and in the hands of terrorists because of the lack of post-war planning. In my eyes, that makes us less safe.

My general point is that people who think the Bush administration mismanaged the war on terrorism, like I do, answer "No" to some or all of the above questions. It's much more complex than one side realizing we're in a post 9-11 world and the other side living in a fantasy land.

We can talk about the necessary of understanding that we are in a war against Islamic fundamentalism, but having that understanding *does not* automatically lead to a set of policies that will improve the security of America.

And Gregory, this is the weak part of your argument that I think you realize on some level. You depart from reason and move to hope when you think that President Bush will change who he is, admit his mistakes, and modify his handling on the war on terrorism if he gets re-elected.

There is nothing in his character or history to suggest that he will do this. It's one thing not to admit mistakes in public, but if you don't do it in private, that is a clear sign that you think you are doing nothing is wrong.

If the war on terrorism is your main issue, and you believe that what a man did in the past is a good predictor for the future, then you have to assume that Bush will handle the war on terrorism in the next four years just as he handled it the first four years, and that Kerry, because of his experience in Vietnam, will be extremely hesitant to use military force.

If you still think Bush is the way to go, that's fine, but it's important to realize that by far the most likely scenario is that Bush II will be just like Bush I. For me, that makes the choice for Kerry clear.

Posted by: Jason at October 18, 2004 05:54 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

An outstanding, cogent piece.

Some notes of interest:

Your analysis of Kerry's foreign policy instincts are indeed correct - his campaigns repeated statements to the terrorists that "we will find you and kill you" strikes one as more bleating protestation than resolute statement. You can usually tell a mans intentions, if you let yourself hear it. From a sensitive war on terror, to prevarication on Iraq, to his "nuisance" remark, Kerry is what he is - a passive, dovish plutocrat.

Important too in your discussion visa vie Israel/Palestinians, is that the Bush White House has done that which is the first step to any solution in the region - declared Yasser Arafat persona non grata. No lasting regional peace can be sown with Arafat at the table. He is boith vile and corrupt.

And in Iraq, you note what most do not - that for every problem the coalition faces, there are two that we don't. There were projections of everything from a murderous siege of Baghdad to the mass dehydration of the populace. This does not excuse a failure to respond to the challenges that arise, but the backbiting presumption that all difficulties in war should be both infinitely forseeable and preventable betrays a grand ignorance of military campaigns in general, including the United States (An Army At Dawn is an excellent read for anyone wondering if we've ever had similar problems in war).

No further truth need be known than this - the enemies of liberty and the West knows full well the battle against them has been joined at last - and they doubt not in the least that GWB is willing to wage it against them even to the ends of his own political costs.

Posted by: MEC2 at October 18, 2004 06:04 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I posted this on the previous page, but it bears repeating for those reading this discussion. The eminent conservative realist John Mearsheimer has come out for Kerry, "with enthusiasm", despite having voted for Bush in 2000:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=7602

Regarding the last post with respect to "infinitely foreseeable and preventable" --- I think this completely misses the point. The problems we are having in Iraq were foreseen by many, including many in the government who attempted to plan for them, only to see their "pessimisstic" plans set aside.

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 06:13 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

TT,

We don't need to convince Islam of anything, we need to get in their stone age face and kick their ass. They only understand force. That's why they started to get all giddy with their stone age violence with eight years of liberal shit in the White House. They know better now. Their only hope is Kerry.

Posted by: Alexander at October 18, 2004 06:15 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

One of the most troubling aspects of this election is the overly simplistic framing of the Iraq issue as the following: Bush sees this as a war/ Kerry sees this as law enforcement.

While this may be true to a certain extent in terms of the candidates' rhetoric, the problem with this formulation is that it glosses over the reality of what is going on in Iraq and what has been going there since the invasion phase ended. Despite what Bush "says" he is doing in Iraq or how he "thinks" we should fight the war, his record in Iraq proves that he is just not up to the task.

It's not just the looting and the failure to secure the borders or send enough troops. This president has shown that he is NOT willing to use overwhelming force to destroy the enemy. For over a year and a half, it is Bush who has been fighting the insurgents in Iraq as if this were a law enforcement venture, going door to door and all that. Long, long ago he should have cordoned off the hot spots and bombed them into oblivion. But Bush was scared of the political fall out, what with the inevitable civilian casualties that would have attended such action. But if Bush was never prepared to use overwhelming force, he should have never sent our troops there in the first place.

I honestly believe (but sincerely hope I'm wrong) that Bush has irreparably damaged our ability to win democracy in Iraq because of his timidity with respect to the overwhelming use of force. It is for this reason that I'm voting for Kerry - I know he won't do any better - but I want to send a message to the Republicans that troops should not be sent to fight if they have to fight "sensitively." Maybe in four years we will get a more realistic Republican president.

Posted by: d. diaz at October 18, 2004 06:19 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I agree with the Bush endorsement as well but I'm a bit stunned that someone so informed could think that WMD was the only prime reason for going into Iraq. I would offer three reasons.

1) WMD production capability. Enough said, if Wal-Mart is out of stock you know they will have it tommorrow. I think the same could be said of Saddam. He was out of stock, not out of business
2) The MAP. Look at it! For sheer logistics, taking the fight to Al Qaeda, where is the most strategic point on the map, the ancient map of Islam? Overlay the old trade routes and tribal alliances on the current map of the USA forces also overlayed. Iraq is the center square on Al Qaeda's logistica and strategic map.

3) Oil and the Saudi cooperation. So long as the Saudis had the oil card to play they were going to fall in line on their own time. Post Iraq war that card no longer exists in the manner it did and they have drastically come our way as a result.

The Saudi oil card is probably the essential card that had to be eliminated to apply maximum pressure to our enemies in the war on terror.

The Iraq war was essential to winning, dare I say surviving the war against Islamo Facists.

Posted by: Vanyogan at October 18, 2004 06:28 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

The WMD argument is spurious. The UN was prepared to set up indefinite intrusive inspections, something we could easily have insured would occur.

The map --- this isn't a land war. Al Qaeda needed a small number of recruits armed with box cutter knives they could have bought at Staples. Unless our plan is to turn this war into a conventional war, I can't see any sensible strategic argument for occupying Iraq (ignoring the obvious fact that Iraq was probably far more difficult to traverse by terrorists before the war than it is now.)

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 06:35 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

And, regarding the Saudis --- they were already preparing to make moves towards democracy before all of this blew up. In fact, the Iraq war has angered the Saudi population so much that it is dubious whether this war has in any way moved them towards us --- if anything it has been a wash. Further, they are hardly likely to be scared of us invading them right now --- we're bogged down in Iraq.

The realist arguments in favor of this situation I think are practically nonexistent, barring a great deal of rationalization, as far as I can tell.

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 06:38 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

If this is a war and can never be "law enforcement" who are we invading next? You can't have it both ways, claiming in one sentence that Bush Act II won't be the same as Bush Act I and in the next that it must be all war all the time and law enforcement has nothing to do with it.

I'm always amazed at those who criticize the Kerry statement about returning terrorism to the point to where it's a nuisance and not a major threat. Is there a large populace out there delusional enough to think that this virulent strain of Islamic fundamentalism is going to be completely wiped out to the last fanatic any time soon? That was the point of Kerry's comment no matter how much the Republicans try to twist it. Kerry's goal is to crush them to the point where a nuisance is all they can be, an admirable goal given the real world versus Republican macho fantasies.

And lastly, I have no words adequate to express my outrage at your saying that the Bush Administration's policy making decision isn't "fatally" flawed. It's been fatal to hundreds of our soldiers who might not have died if Bush's policy decisions hadn't completely ignored everyone who really knew anything about Iraq when it came to postwar planning. Tell their parents and loved ones that Bush's planning had no "fatal" flaws. And we have years yet for more of our people to be killed by the terrorists that Bush threw Iraq's doors open for.

Posted by: Jim at October 18, 2004 06:54 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

To be fair, Jim, the mere fact that soldiers have died isn't in and of itself an indication of a fatally flawed decision-making process. If the prosecution of this war had been competent, soldiers would have still died. It isn't the fact of Americans dying that makes this situation disastrous --- it is the incompetence with which this war on terror has been prosecuted thus far. These soldiers are dying unnecessarily because of bad intelligence, willful suppression of contrary points of view, lack of planning, strategic and tactical errors, and overreach.

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 07:01 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Wow Greg, it seems like you got linked from somewhere not very ideologically friendly. :P

Posted by: Cutler at October 18, 2004 07:12 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Forgot to add:

Good post.

Posted by: Cutler at October 18, 2004 07:13 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

I came here via Andrew Sullivan --- as I said above, the argument here is the best I have seen for voting for Bush, since it at least acknowledges the many disasters in Iraq so far. Couched in realist terms --- I have become an increasing admirer of the realist position, over time (though I still have my differences with the realist camp). I simply think that realist arguments militate against a vote for Bush... as Mearsheimer's endorsement of Kerry indicates (not to mention the opposition to this war of the Cato Institute).

Posted by: Mitsu at October 18, 2004 07:34 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Extremism in defense of Western Civilization is no vice.

Bullshit. 19 nutjobs with knives. Roadside bombs, exploding sneakers. In 25years the oil will be pumped out and they can go back to trying to keep sand out of their creases.

While W's crusade tries to convert the heathens to democracy, the rest of the world grows stronger. The real war, as Nixon pointed out, does not involve any islamo-blah blah.

Indians out-sourcing IT. All production to China. A third of the world's population is about to eat our lunch, and we are cursing and ranting about who is going to keep us safe from ragheads.

Round up the loose Nukes. Take out whatever high value targets Iran and NorthKorea offer. Not surgical strikes either. Boots on the ground, pirate the material, data, personnel if need be.

Sounds extreme? Extremism is Roves's "Armies of Compassion", in a campain of revengo-liberation. Wildly flailing at some punk that got in a good punch. Holy rollers in Humvees driveby his family while leaving leaflets about democracy. Shock and Awe may rally the faith-based. Flag-waving, god-fearing rapture, the intoxication of simple-mindedness, it's a vice, wait for the hangover.

In 50 years, maybe we get again by another islamo-whamo. Maybe the garden of eden sprouts in Iraq. Maybe the Chinese, Indians and Europeans profit from our spasm of extremism.

Maybe the world didn't change on 911. Maybe the extremists just grabbed the wheel.

============================

Posted by: JPO at October 18, 2004 07:58 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink


BD--

Lucid as this seems as a whole, your argument collapses into vague handwaving at the most crucial moment, which is this paragraph:

"But there is more than all this, of course. 9/11 was what Hegel might have called a world-historical event. There was something prima facie epoch-shaping that happened when those two Towers crumbled to the ground. Expressions of regret poured in from all over the world. Even the Mayor of Teheran extended condolences to Rudy. Saddam, of course, extended no such regrets. But why should he have? After all, while not reportedly sharing any collaborative, operational links with al-Qaeda--he was (to a fashion) linked to them in esprit--given his use of chemical weaponry against his own population, his support to the families of suicide bombers in Israel, his harboring of Abu Nidal and other terror-masters in the past."

I've read this paragraph three times, and the bottom line seems to be that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda because they are both bad guys. But it's just not true that if X and Y both hate us, they must be allies. In fact, that assertion is pretty close to a definition of paranoia.

Saddam was a secular dictator in the mode of Stalin. He had no interest in Islamic fundamentalism, and was as brutal toward fundamentalists as toward anyone else who got in the way of his survival. The assertion that Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda was not only false, it was never even plausible.

GW Biush is a direct and urgent threat to the national security of the USA, for one simple reason: he has destroyed his credibility by "crying wolf." The next time an urgent threat arises, and the US needs to rally the world, who can blame our allies for responding with suspicion, seeing as how this man has already misled them?

Even if a leader were convinced of the need to join our next coalition, how would they build domestic consensus so long as Bush is leading? Bulletin: Our cloest allies are democracies, and that means that the opinions of their people matter. Republicans like to vilify Chirac and Schroeder as devious game-players who were trying to protect their advantages in prewar Iraq, but the truth is much plainer. Huge majorities of the European, Australian, and Canadian people express strong distrust of Bush, bordering on revulsion. So long as Bush is in office, their leaders will have to surmount this huge barrier to come to our aid.

Bush's eagerness to unite the world against us is reason enough to vote for any halfway competent and halfway honorable alternative. I cannot imagine that Americans woudl consider re-electing a president who is viewed as pathetic, if not dangerous, whenever he stepped outside our borders.

Sincerely, JW

Posted by: JW at October 18, 2004 08:29 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

"George Bush, in my view, understands the nature of the evil we are combating. He understands it deep in his gut, to his very core, and this is why I will be voting for him in November...I am confident and, indeed, proud of my vote because Bush's intellectual firmament has grasped this essential truth."

Good to hear you're in touch with W's very core. That's quite a talent.

Oh, and if your writing style weren't so sophomoric and wordy, you'd get your point across much better.

Posted by: TrueFan at October 18, 2004 08:41 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Reasons for war shouldn't subtle and nuanced. If it's not obvious to most people, it's probably the wrong war. Having to write 2,000 word defenses of a war a year and a half after it started, shows the "why" was never obvious to half the country and most of the world.

The more you write the less the rest of us get it. We are invading the middle east -a huge risk- these "meta" reasons people float are bullshit. You and others float them because this president never appeared to settle on a reason and was certainly never able to articulate a compelling reason -not to the converted- but the skeptical. That's a massive failure of leadership.

Your "hey it could be worse" list makes it real obvious why we should never have gone.

Posted by: jason jonez at October 18, 2004 08:46 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

"The map --- this isn't a land war. Al Qaeda needed a small number of recruits armed with box cutter knives they could have bought at Staples. Unless our plan is to turn this war into a conventional war, I can't see any sensible strategic argument for occupying Iraq (ignoring the obvious fact that Iraq was probably far more difficult to traverse by terrorists before the war than it is now.)"

A naive statement, at best. There is no more strategic position in the Middle East from which to base and project American force. And, the purpose of basing is not to have to project, but to have the capability of projecting without getting a hall pass from Jacque, Hans, Tayyip, Bashar, Abdullah, the mullahs, etc. And, it has been extremely effective: Qaddafi gives up nukes, Assad cooperates in limiting Al Qaeda passage through Damascus and closing Syrian/Iraqi border, Saudi's have staunched the flow of money from Wahabis to Al Qaeda and are attacking Al Qaeda within SA and US troops & planes sit on all sides of Iran (literally).
Furthermore, the heart and soul of Al Queda lie within Saudi Arabia: its Wahabi imams incite hatred and ignite terror as tools to rid themselves and their believers of the Arabian sense of inferiority and impotence that underlies radical islam. That is the root cause of "terrorism" and our presence next door greatly enhances our ability to pressure the rational realists among the Saudi elites to take the necessary actions to choke of Wahabi financing and recruiting for Al Queda. And lest anyone forget, should any of these Islamic radicals inflict severe damage upon the Saudi oilfields, the resulting depression would make the The Gread Depression look like a day at the beach.

In summary, yes, geography still matters (and always will)!

Posted by: Jim at October 18, 2004 08:58 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Realists have had enough time to wreck the U.S.'s standing in the world. The whole concept simply amounts to waiting for the breeze around us to change-- in inherantly defensive and reactionary posture. The left used to despise the policy of "so and so is a S.O.B.- but he's our S.O.B-- it ain't us he's butchering"

The US does no one, especially itself, by denying the obvious position it holds in geopolitics. The Arab (and Persian) world is dystopic, a cultural crisis that cannot come to grips with the modern world. Don't fool yourself into thinking the Jihadists are acting rationally by mistaking tactics for a coherent worldview. What exists in the Arab world bears very little resemblence to Arab culture. For example, the literacy rate hovers around 20% for a people that saved classical thought and mathematics from oblivion.

The realists (i.e. the left) are the ones content to ignore this so long as the oil flows. One post said that we need to make the situation safe for moderates. How? By negotiating with their oppresors? By chewing it over with Europeans, less than a hundred years removed from their adventures in imposing borders and demanding concessions.

You take for granted the power of a free press, and society and its necessity to establish non-hostile and reasonable communication between east and west. The "arab street" isn't mad about any specific policy decisions that people in the State department debate over; they're mad that Jews have hijacked the US and are conspiring to threaten every muslim boy's manhood and banish the teachings of allah forever. Its a society that has no room for advancement, no empirical education, and encourages a literalist interpreatation of its sacred texts that serves up recruits. Its a society that has twisted the meaning of sacrifice, so as to give death cults a significant spiritual place in it. Free societies encourage the introspection needed to correct these trends.

For all the talk about how awful Iraq is now, I'd bet that it is the most pro-american Arab state going. Egypt has gotten billions in foreign aid each year for over twenty years, yet the venom spit at the US in its state run newspapers would make Nazi's blush.

You realists are souless because you are essentially saying the war is a bad idea because its hard, and entails risks. Well, that includes anything tht is worth doing, but never mind. You have offered nothing but cliches and banality masked as "progressive" and insightful thought. Sure their has been errors, but I can point to hundreds during WWII that cost ten-fold the lives (civilian and military) yet it remains the only politically correct war. My point is the choice is never good vs. bad in these situations, wars need to be judged in context and you keep inserting a context that is 35 years old. The point of Iraq was to alleviate an unsustainable situation and use it to transform the region. If you don't think a transformation is necessary, then its a valid argument, one should actually attempt to make it instead of bitching in hindsight and playing semantic games or trucking in conspiracy theories. If you don't think its possible, than one should admit it, instead of pretending that were it not for GWB or "arrogance" we wouldn't be in the situation in the first place. I might agree with those arguements were it not for the fact that there are WMD floating around, and they could very well end up with someone who sincerely believes that he's fulfilling G-d's wishes by obliterating millions of Americans. Maybe that's overwrought but why leave something like that up to any degree of chance? thats the lesson of 9/11. The worst that could happen is not broken alliances, rather it is an appocalyptic chain reaction. Would we have ever stopped Khan's nuclear blackmarket if not for Iraq?

Posted by: Jeremaih at October 18, 2004 09:00 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Easily the best coverage on both candidates:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/


and the best method applied to averaging of polls:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Posted by: Carter at October 18, 2004 09:28 AM | Permalink to this comment Permalink

Very nice write-up, although long. Its a good thing ive got plenty of time on my hands to read through it.

My thoughts are a bit more partisan than yours but I can appreciate the struggle you have gone through to come to your conclusion. For me, the mind boggles as how someone, anyone, can remain undecided this late in the game. What will you find out about our President, or Senator Kerry in the next two weeks? We know where both men stand by now. We have had our President in office for the past four years, if you don't have a feel for what he will do over the next four years then you havn't been paying attention. In 2000 me and my wife voted for George Bush because we didn't want four more years of Clinton administration types running this country. We didn't like George Bush because we are conservative and he is not.

Now that four years have gone by our minds have changed considerably. Our love and admiration has grown for the President over these past four years. He does lot's of things that we do not like. We don't like his stance on Immigration, Education, his fiscal policies, etc. But one thing trumps all