Bush/Kerry: The Security Debate
I believe – I hope – there is a strategy hidden in the pabulum: I doubt either Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice would still be attaching their names to the effort if there were not. And I believe that the strategy follows the general outline suggested by Thomas Friedman: to win the hearts and minds of our enemy by birthing a stable democracy at the heart of the Arab/Islamic Middle East, a counter to the forces of theocracy. Expecting it to be there I even heard hints of such a strategy in the President’s formulaic presentation. But the fact that I had to infer it rather than hear it plainly was a constant frustration. And Iraq is still burning.
But if I heard nothing new or encouraging from President Bush, what I heard from Senator Kerry was disheartening. I expected of course to hear a critique of the execution in the war on terror and certainly that was there, although whatever specifics he proposed seemed so close to current policy that they amounted to the same program under new management. That may or may not be worthwhile: the current management has proved inadequate, but since Senator Kerry has no record of management that we can examine to know whether or not his self-confidence is justified, the decision to keep the old or to try the new must be based on little better than guesswork. And his continued assertion that he would internationalize the war to take the burden off our troops and our treasury is almost laughable: unless the leaders of old Europe have already struck a secret deal with Senator Kerry to announce immediately after George W. Bush’s defeat at the polls a heretofore absent intention and capacity for assisting in Iraq (note: that is not an accusation) then Senator Kerry’s confident assertion that the French will suddenly stop behaving like the French when President Kerry strides into Paris is either deluded or disingenuous. If his plans for victory in Iraq rest on that tenuous a foundation they are as unrealistic as the worst assumptions from the Pentagon about American soldiers being treated as liberators during the initial invasion.
The more important message I had hoped to hear from Senator Kerry was his vision for the long-term struggle: who and what he perceives to be the enemy and how he thinks they can be subverted or overcome. What I heard instead confirmed my worst fears: that Senator Kerry not only has no strategy but does not even view this as a struggle worthy of one. His critique of the decision to invade Iraq is still mired in details – who suspected which intelligence and when; how close was Iraq really to deploying WMD; did Saddam Hussein support the attack on America directly (and don’t mention indirectly); did we make enough effort to drag France and Germany along with us – rather than addressing the broader strategic questions: what is the nature of the enemy and their cause; was the tyranny in Iraq contributing to that broader cause; is establishment of a democracy in the middle east the best way to begin to turn the tide against Islamic fundamentalism? I would respect the argument that the strategic benefit of a democratic Iraq has been overstated; or that the potential benefit could not justify the price in international prestige and domestic treasure; or that the difficulty of establishing the desired end and the potential for it going horribly wrong made the risk too high. Whether or not the benefit was worth the cost was always a matter of judgment, and there was no certain answer. I would respect the argument that some approach other than military intervention would be better, provided it was backed by more than wishful thinking about our common humanity. A debate on the merits of these arguments would have been welcome before the invasion and would still be welcome now. What I cannot respect is the utter failure to acknowledge any strategic purpose at all, the assertion that the war in Iraq was entirely about mythical WMD or about mythical connections to the attacks on America or about oil or about personal revenge or about empire – and entirely divorced from the war on terrorism; and worse the assertion that the war on terrorism itself is all about capturing Osama Bin Laden or about securing ports and airliners.
This utter lack of strategic vision – exemplified by the dogmatic insistence that Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden are still the only true front in the war on terror – doom any possibility of victory.