Bush/Kerry: The Security Debate
Before the Iraq war Thomas Friedman of the New York Times broke with most of his colleagues on the left to support an invasion on grounds both principled and strategic – that liberation of the subjugated was in the classic liberal tradition, and that establishment of a viable democracy in the heart of the Arab world was perhaps the most potent potential counter to the fusion of Islamic fundamentalism with Arab nationalism that is the inspiration for global terror. His support, however, was qualified by the observation that the Bush administration seemed ill-prepared to execute on that strategic vision and was as likely to lose the peace as it was to win the war. That qualification now seems prescient.
President Bush, indeed, must answer for a host of tactical failures in the planning and execution of the post-combat period in Iraq. Even if it is unfair to assert that the current chaos is itself proof that the invasion was a mistake – a cancer patient halfway through chemotherapy may not yet see his cancer in a convincing retreat, but he has been nonetheless poisoned by the process and is by most measures less healthy than before the treatments began – it is clear that the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq has been notable for its inadequate preparation and staffing, ideological arrogance, cultural ignorance, misallocation of resources, political interference, and susceptibility to operational catastrophes like Abu Graib. The ill-effects of these problems, and of cynical accusations that the war was prosecuted under false pretenses, have been exaggerated because the President has been so far unable – or perhaps for some inexplicable reason he believes it unnecessary or unwise – to articulate clearly and completely either the long-term strategy we are following or how the disarming and democratization of Iraq furthers that strategy. Broad platitudes about freedom and the dangers of WMD offer glimpses of substance but not substance itself.
But if the President must answer for tactical blunders in pursuit of a real but unarticulated strategy, Senator Kerry has yet to offer anything that resembles a strategy at all. His has been a platform of rather minor tactical adjustments, buttressed by assertions of calumny and incompetence and claims of his own superior managerial and diplomatic talent, seemingly disconnected from any long-term vision other than some vague faith in the moral ascendancy of the inaptly named international “community”.
So my choice has seemed to be between continuing along a perilous road with a demonstrably incompetent driver following what may be a decent map that he won’t show anyone, and starting along the same road with a driver of self-proclaimed but unproven competence who has no map at all and a suspect sense of direction. It was my hope that the give-and-take of a debate on foreign policy and security would reveal something encouraging about one or both of them. Notwithstanding the considered judgment of the commentariat that the debate was substantive and that Senator Kerry won, I was disappointed.
From President Bush I had hoped to hear, at last, an intelligent and thorough overview of our strategy for the war on terror, an acknowledgement of where things have gone wrong (and right) so far, and a plausible plan for correcting those problems. What I heard instead was ”Trust Me” repeated ad nauseum in a precious few tedious variations. His recurring assertion that to question the wisdom of his strategy or tactics somehow gave succor to the enemy might have been persuasive if he had made any attempt to explain or justify either, but without such an attempt the assertion was merely condescending. And his refusal even to acknowledge that we might have cause for concern about the future in Iraq – his insistence that merely acknowledging that it is “hard work, important work” should somehow be enough to reassure us that we have a viable plan for calming the current conflagration and extracting a democracy from the ashes – did nothing to assuage my doubts.