Kerry's Nuanced Position on Iraq

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
1

In light of Lumpy’s request on another thread – with which I heartily agree – I want to start this thread to discuss Kerry’s position(s) on Iraq. I’ll start with this, which I got from www.oxblog.com :

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Posted 11:08 PM by David Adesnik

KERRY’S EXTREMELY SIMPLE AND STRAIGHTFORWARD POSITION ON THE WAR: Kevin Drum ( http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004512.php )has had enough of everyone who pretends that Kerry hasn’t taken a clear and consistent position on the war in Iraq. Kevin cites Will Saletan’s ( http://slate.msn.com/id/2105096/ )lengthy explication of Kerry’s position on the war and concludes that

You can decide for yourself whether you like this position, but it's not hard to grasp.

Actually, Saletan says something else: that John Kerry has had a consistent position on the war, but that it is extremely hard to grasp because Kerry constantly spins his position to fit the demands of the moment:

This is classic Kerry: emphasizing the right half of his position when it's convenient, then the left half when that's more convenient. But it isn't a change of position.

I’m not sure I’m even willing to be that generous. What Saletan describes as Kerry’s actual position on the war is actually quite vague. Its four principal elements are “compliance, inspections, skepticism, [and] process.”

Yet at the same time, Kerry ackonwledges that Saddam may not comply, inspections may not work, and the UN process may hit a dead end. In February 2002, when Chris Matthews asked John Kerry if diplomacy was enough to disarm Iraq, Kerry said:

"Outside chance, Chris. Could it be done? The answer is yes. [Saddam] would view himself only as buying time and playing a game, in my judgment. [But] do we have to go through that process? The answer is yes."

Thus, the real question is when to conclude that the “four elements” aren’t working and that force is required. On May 3, 2003 ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A16686-2003May5¬Found=true ), when George Stephanopoulos asked if George Bush made the right decision to invade on March 19, Kerry reponded that

I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity. But I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm [Saddam].

Saletan notes that

This appears to be the first time Kerry endorses the war as Bush conducted it.

I agree. Despite his vague aveat about preferring more diplomacy, Kerry is endorsing the war. In contrast, Howard Dean told Stephanopolous that I think “This was the wrong war at the wrong time.” Anyhow, five months later, Kerry told ABC that

[The Bush administration] did not give legitimacy to the inspections. We could have still been doing inspections even today.

Saletan argues that this is Kerry’s real position and that if he had been President, there would have been no invasion. Perhaps, but you can’t infer that from what Kerry said on ABC. If anything, his response to Stephanopoulous in May carries greater weight because it was closer to the actual date of the war.

But leaving aside the question of which is the ‘real’ John Kerry, I think it’s important to point out that Kerry’s contradictory statements from May and October call into question Saletan’s argument that Kerry had a consistent position on the war.

But if even you ignore everything that Kerry said before last month’s convention, it’s still hard to figure out what his position on the war is. In the same interview where Kerry defended his vote to give the President war powers in October 2002, Kerry accused the President of rushing to war without enough allies. Incensed by the press coverage of this statement, Bob Somersby ( Brit admits that Bush is 'stretching.' But at the great Times, he's just "shrewd" )asks:

What is Kerry?s stand on Iraq? Readers, get ready for some real brain-work! Here goes: Kerry says Bush should have had the authority to go to war, but then went to war prematurely. Wow! Have you finished scratching your heads about all the nuance involved in that statement? It?s hard to believe that any grown person could pretend that this is complex or confusing.

Well, then let me pretend. Until Kerry defines “prematurely”, we will have no idea what his position on the war actually is. If Bush let the inspections go on for another six months, would an invasion still have been premature? If he had spent another six months recruiting European allies, would the war still have been premature?

But what if another six months of inspections failed to turn up additional evidence? And what if the Europeans still held out after another six months of courtship? These are just some of the questions that Kerry avoids answering by hiding behind the word ‘premature’.

2

Excerpt from Kerry’s speech on the floor of the Senate, before voting for the bill giving the president the power to act:

"As the President made clear earlier this week, “Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.” It means “America speaks with one voice.”

Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days–to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent–and I emphasize “imminent”–threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has recognized a similar need to distinguish how we approach this. He has said that he believes we should move in concert with allies, and he has promised his own party that he will not do so otherwise. The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. And it is what can be done. If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.

In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize “yet.” Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack."

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[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
In light of Lumpy’s request on another thread – with which I heartily agree – I want to start this thread to discuss Kerry’s position(s) on Iraq.[/quote]

I like the way you start out by framing the discussion, so that it revolves around Kerry’s supposedly “changing positions”.

This would be like me pretending to start an honest discussion about Bush’s military records, by asking “Did he go AWOL because he’s a chicken shit, or was he just really busy?”

By the way, ever heard of quotation marks? Even I have a hard time following your convoluted posts, and I know where you’re trying to lead me.

[quote]Incensed by the press coverage of this statement, Bob Somersby ( http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh081204.shtml )asks:

“What is Kerry’s stand on Iraq? Readers, get ready for some real brain-work! Here goes: Kerry says Bush should have had the authority to go to war, but then went to war prematurely. Wow! Have you finished scratching your heads about all the nuance involved in that statement? It’s hard to believe that any grown person could pretend that this is complex or confusing.”

Well, then let me pretend. Until Kerry defines “prematurely”, we will have no idea what his position on the war actually is. If Bush let the inspections go on for another six months, would an invasion still have been premature? [/quote]

If we would have let the inspections continue, we would have seen that there were no actual WMD stockpiles, and we wouldn’t have wasted 200 billion dollars in taxpayer money and killed almost 1,000 of our own guys, 6,000 of our guys maimed, and 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi civilians. What the hell would have been lost by allowing the weapons inspectors to continue to do their jobs? Weapons inspections were working!!! But since the results (no WMD found) didn’t conform to the White House’s pre-determined outcome, Bush pulled the plug.

That would have been great!!! For one thing we wouldn’t be in the shit hole we’re stuck in, now!!! We could have learned the truth, that there were no WMDs, without losing another thousand American lives and wasting hundreds of billions of tax dollars.

You’re post is completely lacking in logic, as if there were only TWO possible choices: Rush immediately into war, or do nothing at all. Bullshit!

More than two choices can only be called “nuanced” if you’re a moron!!!

4

Lumpy,

That speech brings up many interesting discussion points.

Unfortunately (for you) John Kerry recently said he would have voted yes even without the large cache of WMD’s being found.

Further, if (as I think you are contending) Kerry didn’t realize the implications of his first vote, HE STILL SAID RECENTLY HE WOULD HAVE VOTED YES. Yes, even knowing what George eventually did in Iraq. Yes, even without the large cache. Yes, even after defying the international community (aka France and Germany).

Therefore, even John Kerry knows, that Saddam’s regime had to go.

Thanks for the post!!!

JeffR

5

JeffR
The vote we are discussing was not a vote to go to war. You seem to be under the illusion that it was a Yes-No vote on pulling the trigger for war. That’s wrong.

The vote was whether the Congress would give the president sole discretion on pulling the trigger. (Turns out that this was possibly illegal, because Congress does not have the power to allow the president sole discretion for declaring war. At best, they failed in their responsibilities).

Kerry voted yes, with the idea that there were strict conditions attached to the president pulling the trigger, that are described above. Unfortunately, Bush did not adhere to those conditions. Kerry promised he would speak out against the president if he did not adhere to the conditions, and he has.

The reason that Kerry still supports the idea of giving the President extra powers is that since Kerry thinks he will be taking over in 2005, he’ll wants those additional power as well. Wouldn’t you??? Hopefully, President Kerry will use a little more discretion before launching a pre-emptive attack, than George Bush did.

You may want to consider the possibility of a Kerry presidency as an “acid test” for your political beliefs. For example, will you still be gung-ho for the Patriot Act, when it is the Democrats who are the ones with new powers to monitor citizen’s private activities? Would you support Kerry if he attacked another nation pre-emptively, on what turned out to be a bogus rationale?

Have a great day!

6

On war, John Kerry is all Vietnam and no Iraq

By Matt Welch
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, August 19, 2004

Ever since the Democratic Convention in Boston last month, the John-John ticket has been grumbling about having to fend off accusations that would-be president John Kerry previously fudged vivid details of his war record in Vietnam and (most controversially) Cambodia. There is indeed considerable merit to the notion that a nation at war should be focusing on 2004 instead of 1968, but if Kerry’s convention performance was any guide, his go-to selling point for taking the reigns of the “war on terror” is the fact that he was piloting swift-boats up the Mekong back when Osama bin Laden was busy trying to grow his first beard.

Those of us anxious to hear some actual specifics about what a Kerry foreign policy would be for, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia, were instead treated to a smorgasbord of what Democrats these days are against: alienating allies, manipulating intelligence, cutting benefits for military veterans and going to war against Saddam Hussein’s regime in the precise way that President George W. Bush went to war against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“Republicans have sent our troops into battle in Iraq without a plan and have cut veterans’ benefits without remorse,” said perma-grinning House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, in a speech that - like the majority of those delivered during the four-day Democratic Party infomercial - did not once mention the phrases “terrorism,” “Middle East,” “Islam,” “democracy,” “Israel,” “Palestinian” or “Saudi Arabia.” So what’s the winning counter-proposal? “Democrats have it right: Protect our troops and honor our veterans!” And change the subject as soon as possible to healthcare.

The Democrats’ slogan for the convention - “Stronger at home, respected in the world” - was little more than a mirror image of perceived Republican mismanagement, as was hammered home in speech after speech differentiating the administration’s actions with, well, Kerry’s Vietnam service, which was presented as a contrast to Bush’s war-avoiding stint in the Texas Air National Guard.

“Our forces have been dangerously overstretched,” said former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry, in one of the handful of foreign policy addresses among the 80-plus speeches. “Against sound military advice, the administration believed that Iraqis would welcome US forces as liberators. Our soldiers and our Marines have had to bear the brunt of this stunning miscalculation.”

So what would Kerry do? Perry’s next words sounded a familiar note and provided nary a clue: “Based on his own service, John Kerry understands what our troops need. With John Kerry as president, help really will be on the way!”

At least Perry had the taste to mention American foreign policy. Most other Democrats, unbelievably, did not. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Vice-President Roberta Achtenberg told us she was “a lawyer, a mother and a lesbian,” but refrained from commenting on countries where such a combination is not only impossible, but also dangerous. New Jersey Congressman Bobby Menendez spoke of how his “family fled Cuba for this, the greatest democracy in the world,” but he shed no light on how the US should deal with belligerent, murderous dictators, let alone those in violation of multiple weapons-related UN resolutions.

Howard Dean, the onetime candidate whose rabid following energized the Democratic primary campaign and provided what pulse was evident in Boston, managed to speed through his prime-time speech without even once mentioning the Iraq war - his opposition to which was the sole reason why the word “Deaniac” is now in the lexicon.

There were two excellent strategic reasons for this muzzled approach: By limiting most foreign policy discussion to a catalogue of Bush’s sins, the Democrats could try to position this election as a referendum on the increasingly unpopular incumbent. And by offering little or no specifics in response, Kerry could remain a viable vessel for the many anti-Bush voters out there, even though they disagree violently about fundamental issues of war, Middle Eastern democratization and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This nose-holding “unity” was the dominant theme of the convention, which is why so many Deaniacs seemed upbeat despite the fact that almost all their political ideas lost out. Whenever I’d ask delegates what made them particularly excited about John Kerry, the average pause was four seconds, and the response was never convincing. After his triumphant speech, the chant outside the Fleet Center was not “John Kerry!” it was “No More Years!” I kept running into newly motivated Democrats, like political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow and polemicist filmmaker Michael Moore, who I’d seen several times during the 2000 campaign stumping for Ralph Nader. “You know,” Tomorrow explained, “it’s just not the year for Nader.”

Fact is, Kerry voted to give Bush the authority to go to war, and said last week that he’d do it again even knowing what we know now. He has stacked his foreign policy team with liberal hawks like the former State Department spokesman James Rubin, and gave a crucial prime-time slot on the final night to a Democratic interventionist lefties despise, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Albright brought the normally raucous crowd of 20,000 to an almost stunned silence when she said: “But have no doubt, John Kerry will do whatever it takes to defend America whether others approve or not.” Ditto for vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, who, when finally bringing up foreign policy for the first time two-thirds of the way into his own speech, drew no applause for saying: “John and I have one clear unmistakable message for Al-Qaeda and the terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you.”

Contrast that with the raucous reception for former Vice-President Al Gore, when he said: “Isn’t it now obvious that the way the war has been managed by the administration has gotten us into very serious trouble?”

What, finally, will Kerry do about this trouble? The Democratic Party platform says little beyond “internationalization” (a catch-all solution to most of the world’s problems), increased training and the creation of a High Commissioner for something or other. As for the rest of the Middle East, Democrats aim to “launch a ‘name and shame’ campaign against those that are financing terror. If nations do not respond, they will be shut out of the US financial system. And in the specific case of Saudi Arabia, we will put an end to the Bush administration’s kid-glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money.”

Kerry says more of the same in his campaign book “A Call To Service,” with the exception of a rare flash of enthusiasm about signing free-trade deals with Arab countries that end their economic boycott of Israel.

“I know what we have to do in Iraq,” Kerry said, tantalizingly, in his convention-capping speech. “We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers.” In short, we can be sure that Kerry will almost certainly not be George W. Bush. Beyond that is anybody’s guess.

“How to handle Iraq is the most important question facing the president,” wrote a disappointed Matthew Yglesias of the liberal American Prospect magazine, just after Kerry finished, “and he just punted.”

Matt Welch covered the Democratic convention for Reason magazine, where he is a contributing editor, and will be reporting on the Republican Convention at http://reason.com/conventions. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

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[quote]Lumpy wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
In light of Lumpy’s request on another thread – with which I heartily agree – I want to start this thread to discuss Kerry’s position(s) on Iraq.

I like the way you start out by framing the discussion, so that it revolves around Kerry’s supposedly “changing positions”.

This would be like me pretending to start an honest discussion about Bush’s military records, by asking “Did he go AWOL because he’s a chicken shit, or was he just really busy?”[/quote]

No, that would be a compound question. I merely embedded my conclusion into the opening statement. Would you rather I did not state my conclusion in the beginning, to make it easy to see where I am coming from?

Sorry about that – I just paste the quotes, which have been highlighted by indentation by the author of the original post, but the indents don’t come through here. I didn’t go in and add quotes for you – but you can always follow the original link and see the post if you’re confused.

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[quote]Lumpy wrote:

If we would have let the inspections continue, we would have seen that there were no actual WMD stockpiles, and we wouldn’t have wasted 200 billion dollars in taxpayer money and killed almost 1,000 of our own guys, 6,000 of our guys maimed, and 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi civilians. What the hell would have been lost by allowing the weapons inspectors to continue to do their jobs? Weapons inspections were working!!! But since the results (no WMD found) didn’t conform to the White House’s pre-determined outcome, Bush pulled the plug.[/quote]

Lumpy – hindsight is 20/20 – it’s easy to go back and criticize, but it’s tougher to enunciate a policy, especially a going-forward policy, to which you will be held. Kerry hasn’t even managed to nail down his position on the past, much less offer a vision of how the future should be managed.

[quote]But what if another six months of inspections failed to turn up additional evidence?

That would have been great!!! For one thing we wouldn’t be in the shit hole we’re stuck in, now!!! We could have learned the truth, that there were no WMDs, without losing another thousand American lives and wasting hundreds of billions of tax dollars.

Your post is completely lacking in logic, as if there were only TWO possible choices: Rush immediately into war, or do nothing at all. Bullshit!

More than two choices can only be called “nuanced” if you’re a moron!!!
[/quote]

Actually, Lumpy, “nuanced” is Kerry’s description of his policy, not mine. But thanks for saying he’s a moron.

The reason he has a reputation as a flip-flopper is his refusal to take a position. As I said above, he can’t even take a single position on Iraq, let alone define a clear policy alternative. He offers a bunch of airy criticisms, but no answers.

Small wonder so many of those who dislike Bush still won’t support Kerry.

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http://www.pejmanesque.com/archives/007627.html

[Scroll down about half way if you follow the link above]
…
Make no mistake: John Kerry is the closest thing we have to a Cassius of the American political scene–except that while Kerry certainly has a lean and hungry look, he does not have any kind of overriding cause driving him and his actions, a cause to which Kerry will subsume, or has subsumed his ambitions. Cassius worked and labored to free Rome from what he saw as the impending imperial dictatorship of Caesar. While he was ambitious and grasping, he also had a cause in which he believed.

John Kerry, on the other hand, believes in nothing but himself. That is why his campaign is so egocentric instead of actually focusing on policy, vision and substance. Contrary to the popular belief, Kerry is indeed quite without substance. His boasts about being able to grasp subtlety and nuance are–as alleged previously http://www.redstate.org/story/2004/8/5/2304/54048
–a fig leaf designed to cover up the scattershot manner in which Kerry approaches issues on an intellectual level. This is a man who has taken all sides of an issue Kerry's Three-Faced Foreign Policy
, not just because he believes it to be politically expedient to do so, but because he hasn’t the slightest idea where he stands or how to be the master of his own mind.

Democrats are eager to make intelligence a major part of the Presidential campaign. Republicans should welcome that debate, for it is increasingly clear that the makeup of John Kerry’s own mind allows for a powerful critique to be written against Kerry. To blunt that critique, Kerry will have to show that he can connect dots, that he can present a coherent set of policies and arguments, and that he will be able to adapt when current events undermine his campaign bromides. http://www.pejmanesque.com/archives/007614.html

Thus far, he has utterly failed at those tasks. Barring a miracle, he will continue to fail all the way until November. And even if Bush-hatred is enough to overcome Kerry’s policy incoherence, it won’t help him govern. Last I heard, the ability to govern was–and is–an important aspect to be considered in electing a President.
Posted by Pejman Yousefzadeh at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Kerry’s Three-Faced Foreign Policy

  • His past raises a question: Is he driven by a solid worldview or just politics?

If I read the tea leaves at the Democratic convention correctly, it seems that John F. Kerry served in Vietnam. But seeing as how Vietnam vets run the gamut from doves like Ron Kovic to hawks like Oliver L. North, Kerry’s four months “in country” don’t tell us much about what he would do in the next four years as president.

Figuring out in advance what any potential president will do is a difficult undertaking in the best of circumstances, because political rhetoric often has little in common with actual policy. Witness George W. Bush’s transformation from skeptic to champion of nation-building. Or Bill Clinton’s metamorphosis from China-basher to China-booster.

But prognostication is especially tough in Kerry’s case. There are three main schools of American foreign policy: isolationism, idealism and realism. At various points in his career ? sometimes at various points in the same speech ? Kerry has championed all of them.

Kerry first strode onto the national stage with his 1971 congressional testimony against the Vietnam War. He called the conflict “barbaric,” accused U.S. soldiers of atrocities “reminiscent of Genghis Khan” and beseeched Americans to “conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last 10 years and more.” Anyone who thinks America is guilty of such terrible crimes obviously would not support military action unless the U.S. suffered a major attack ? something that’s happened only twice in recent history (Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001). This is the definition of an isolationist, and that’s exactly what Kerry sounded like early in his career.

After winning election to the Senate in 1984, he was a vocal critic of support for the Contras fighting to free Nicaragua from the Sandinista dictatorship; he even journeyed to Managua to shake hands with strongman Daniel Ortega. He consistently voted against defense spending and in favor of a nuclear freeze. He opposed the 1983 invasion of Grenada (“a bully’s show of force against a weak Third World nation”) and the 1991 Persian Gulf War (“a war for pride, not for vital interests”). It did not matter to Kerry that the U.N. Security Council had voted unanimously to authorize military action to free Kuwait; at that point, isolationism was more important to him than multilateralism.

Kerry changed his tune with Clinton’s election in 1992. He supported all of Clinton’s military actions ? in Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq and Kosovo ? although these were manifestly wars of choice, not necessity. He chided Republican realpolitikers who opposed using force for humanitarian ends, warning them in 1999 “of the human price the world suffers when we avert our eyes from international atrocities.” In keeping with his support for humanitarian interventions, Kerry has recently criticized President Bush for not doing more in Liberia, Haiti and Darfur. This would seem to make Kerry a Wilsonian idealist who is willing to promote human rights at gunpoint if necessary.

Except that during the last year he’s also developed a realist critique of Bush’s foreign policy. In discussing the war on terror, he seems to have adopted the Kissingerian view that we should defend only our vital strategic interests, not try to promote our “ideology” (a.k.a. our ideals). One of his aides told the Atlantic magazine that there would be “a lot of similarities” between his foreign policy and the cautious, status quo approach pursued by the first Bush administration, which was once roundly criticized by Democrats, including Kerry, for being amoral.

So which course would Kerry adopt as president? Idealist, realist or isolationist? His convention acceptance speech was no help. “I will never hesitate to use force when it is required,” he proclaimed, yet he offered no criteria to suggest when that would be, save when “we have to.” He didn’t say whether Iraq qualified. He criticized Bush for “misleading” us into the war and not doing enough to win the peace, without explaining his own votes in favor of the resolution to use force and against the $86 billion needed for reconstruction.

He promised “to bring our allies to our side” while attacking one notable ally ? Saudi Arabia. He talked about making “America once again a beacon in the world,” but had nothing to say about the need to promote democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq. How brightly would America’s beacon shine if we left either country prematurely without an elected government in place? Kerry was silent on that score. He stressed, instead, the need to “reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers.”

This muddle raises the question of whether Kerry has a worldview, or whether he merely goes wherever the political winds blow. Surely it’s no coincidence that his stances track precisely mainstream Democratic opinion, which was isolationist in the 1970s and 1980s, idealistically interventionist in the 1990s and coldly realist since 2001. When the Democrats were split, as they were over Iraq in 2002 and 2003, he clumsily tried to appease both hawks and doves. Where he will wind up nobody knows ? not even, I suspect, him.

11

This gives a pretty good description of how Kerry feels about Iraq.

12

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Lumpy – hindsight is 20/20 – it’s easy to go back and criticize, but it’s tougher to enunciate a policy, especially a going-forward policy, to which you will be held. Kerry hasn’t even managed to nail down his position on the past, much less offer a vision of how the future should be managed.[/quote]

First of all, it didn’t take “hindsight” to know that there were no WMDs, because LOTS of people were telling the administration that there were no WMDs in Iraq. People like Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, and so on. These were weapons inspectors who were actually on the ground in Iraq, not “suits” back in Washington like Donald Rumsfeld, who weren’t inb a position to know. But any statements that didn’t conform to Team Bush’s PRECONCEIVED notion of what they wanted-- an excuse to invade-- were ignored. It doesn’t take hindsight to listen to the experts who are in a position to know, rather than the idealogues who were already planning an invasion. So lets not try to re-write history, BB!

Kerry has already outlined a position on Iraq, which Bush has gradually adopted!!! For example, months ago, John Kerry was calling for the president to go to the UN and go to NATO, and get our allies more involved. Finally, months after the president announced “Mission Accomplished”, Bush recently went to the UN and went to NATO to ask for their help.

As far as outlining a strategy for what to do in Iraq NOW, if George Bush needs Kerry’s help on what to do next in Iraq, then he should swallow his pride and ask for Kerry’s help!! Bush should just admit he’s stumped on Iraq, and bring in some of Kerry’s brainpower.

If you want Kerry to predict what he’ll do four months from now, after he takes office, that would be foolish, since the situation in Iraq is constatntly changing. By the same token, why doesn’t George Bush say what HE’LL do in Iraq, in four months???

13

This is pretty good stuff:

http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp
[No permalink available]

RUBIN PULLS BACK ON KERRY’S ‘PROBABLE’ IRAQ WAR POSITION [08/25 07:55 AM]

It is likely this Ron Brownstein article

will be spun in some circles as a victory for the Kerry camp, as the candidate is now disassociated from a statement that appared to symbolize the confusion of his position on Iraq. And yet, when one of your foreign policy gurus has to say, “No, I was wrong, I didn’t really know what Kerry’s position was,” it is not a good sign. It is worse when one is given the scenario of weapons inspections breaking down and “United Nations explicitly authorized war,” and the answer is, “maybe Kerry would, he isn’t sure.”

[Excerpt from LAT article]In a statement to The Times, James P. Rubin said he was wrong when he recently said that as president, Kerry "in all probability" would also have invaded Iraq if weapons inspections broke down and the United Nations explicitly authorized war.

"I never should have said the phrase 'in all probability' Kerry would have launched a military attack because that's not Kerry's position and he's never said it," Rubin said in the statement.

His retraction was another example of the struggle by Kerry and his campaign to clarify his position on Iraq and how it differs from Bush's. For months, Bush and his supporters have accused the Democratic presidential nominee of sending conflicting signals on Iraq and trying to blur his position to appeal to both prowar and antiwar voters.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush's reelection campaign, said the statement by Rubin, an assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Clinton administration, was "more in a long line of confusing statements by John Kerry and his advisors" about the war in Iraq.

"There's a reason why a guy as smart as Jamie Rubin is confused about John Kerry's position: it's because John Kerry has changed it on an almost weekly basis," Schmidt said.

Rubin revised his remark after it figured prominently in a debate on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday between senior Kerry advisor Tad Devine and Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman.

Mehlman argued that Rubin's comments meant Kerry and Bush "agreed about sending our troops to war."

Campaign sources said Rubin issued his retraction after discussing the issue with Kerry.

Kerry has consistently argued that Bush moved too quickly to war. But the Massachusetts senator has not explicitly answered whether, and under what circumstances, he might have used force against Iraq.

In an interview, Rubin said, "it is not knowable" whether a President Kerry ultimately would have invaded Iraq, because he would have handled each step along the way so differently than Bush.

“But the Massachusetts senator has not explicitly answered whether, and under what circumstances, he might have used force against Iraq.” [End Excerpt]

Brownstein forgot a line: “Also, he has not explicitly answered whether, and under what circumstances, he might use force against any other nation.”

14

BB,

Excellent posts!

15

It’s a non-story. If you want to know Kerry’s position, ask Kerry, not a spokesman.

If one of Kerry’s aides retracted a statement, I don’t find that to be more than a minor embarassment… to the aide.

There is a whole litany of lies that the Bush administration has told. Not on policy theoreticals, but on the “imminent threat” and urgent need to attack Iraq, taking America into war, rather than allowing the weapons inspectors to continue to do their job.

Team Bush lied to the public, to take us into a “war of choice” with Iraq, when weapons inspections and containment and sanctions were clearly working.

16

[quote]Lumpy wrote:

Team Bush lied to the public, to take us into a “war of choice” with Iraq, when weapons inspections and containment and sanctions were clearly working.

[/quote]

Lumpy, this is getting really old. The CIA, Lord Butler Investigation, Vladimir Putin, the 9-11 Commission, and the Clinton Administration all said otherwise. If you and Michael Moore can’t get your pea-sized brains wrapped around this, I don’t know what else to tell you. He didn’t lie, period.

Dustin

Vote Peroutka in 04

17

[quote]Lumpy wrote:
It’s a non-story. If you want to know Kerry’s position, ask Kerry, not a spokesman.

If one of Kerry’s aides retracted a statement, I don’t find that to be more than a minor embarassment… to the aide.

There is a whole litany of lies that the Bush administration has told. Not on policy theoreticals, but on the “imminent threat” and urgent need to attack Iraq, taking America into war, rather than allowing the weapons inspectors to continue to do their job.

Team Bush lied to the public, to take us into a “war of choice” with Iraq, when weapons inspections and containment and sanctions were clearly working.
[/quote]

Sorry, Lumpy,

But repeating your attacks on Bush doesn’t answer questions on what Kerry’s policies are. Fact of the matter is, he doesn’t want to ennunciate a policy – he’s got too much tied up in trying to be the anti-war guy to the loony-left Deaniac base, while at the same time trying to attract the undecided voters who care about security and are disposed to not trust Dems on the issue. Catch-22 for him.

Anyway, more thoughts on this:

http://www.tagorda.com/archives/003593.php
[Links embedded in original - follow link above to see embedded links]

Never-ending Nuance

If you really want to know why John Kerry struggles to attract swing voters, even though George W. Bush’s approval ratings on Iraq are down and ripe for exploitation, see this Los Angeles Times article.

Earlier this month, Bush challenged Kerry to say yes or no – once and for all – on Iraq. Kerry replied in the affirmative, stressing that he “would have voted for the authority [to use force],” though he “would have used that authority effectively.” The candidates then went back and forth on whether the answer represented “a new nuance.”

Meanwhile, Democratic adviser Jamie Rubin added that, “in all probability,” Kerry would have attacked Saddam Hussein by now. This statement was a mistake: it undercut Kerry’s message that Bush moved too hastily to war and that his own diplomatic efforts could have prevented military action. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Rubin figured prominently in a debate between Tad Devine and Ken Mehlman, with the former stumbling to explain Kerry’s stance.

Today, Rubin takes back his comment:

"I never should have said the phrase 'in all probability' Kerry would have launched a military attack because that's not Kerry's position and he's never said it," Rubin said in the statement.

[...]

In an interview, Rubin said, "it is not knowable" whether a President Kerry ultimately would have invaded Iraq, because he would have handled each step along the way so differently than Bush.

Given these twists and turns, do you expect casual voters to have any idea how Kerry plans to fix Iraq? Of course not. They can barely understand his positions, let alone his plans. Yet the latter is precisely what they’re seeking before throwing their support behind him.

Besides demonstrating the insane complexity of Kerry’s stance, as well as the difficulties of presenting it, Rubin validates the political wisdom of Bush’s original challenge. The Democrats are stunted. And you can bet that Bush will take advantage of their mess by displaying clarity – whether genuine or not – during the Republican National Convention next week.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh offers his thoughts.
Robert Garcia Tagorda | 06:37 PM

18

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/wallison200408270852.asp

August 27, 2004, 8:52 a.m.
Quiz Show
Yet more nuances from Kerry on Iraq.

By Peter J. Wallison

It now appears that Senator John Kerry’s statement that he would have voted to go to war in Iraq ? even if he had known that weapons of mass destruction would not be found ? was “nuanced” after all. Shortly after this apparently unambiguous declaration, Rand Beers, one of Kerry’s national-security advisers, told the New York Times that there were four “differences” between the Bush and Kerry policies: “Rushing to war is one, doing it without enough allies is two, doing it without equipping our troops adequately is three, and doing it without an adequate plan to win the peace is a fourth.” What was not clear from this statement was whether these four elements were conditions ? all of which would have to be satisfied before Kerry would act ? or simply aspirations, ways that Kerry would have done the same thing better if he’d had the opportunity.

Now we have a statement from the Kerry camp that suggests the senator was once again hiding behind nuance in answering the president’s question. In an interview in the Washington Post, Jamie Rubin, another of Kerry’s foreign-policy advisers, said he had been wrong in an earlier statement that Kerry would “in all probability” have gone to war against Iraq. According the Washington Post, Rubin now says that “what we don’t know is what would have happened if a president had gone about it in the right way.” In other words, by having his campaign advisers enunciate four additional conditions, Kerry has once again left himself an out: he would not necessarily have invaded Iraq ? he would have gone to war only if he could have been satisfied that four conditions were present. Not even his foreign-policy advisers seem to know for sure what the senator would have done as president.

It is remarkable enough that a specific question from the president was necessary to elicit any kind of direct response from Senator Kerry about what he would have done about Saddam Hussein. (One wonders what the media has been doing.) It now seems, however, that the president actually didn’t get a clear answer ? there were unstated conditions, nuances, in Kerry’s seemingly unambiguous response ? and thus the president must continue his investigation. If the known absence of WMDs was not a condition to action by Senator Kerry, it is now important to know what the real conditions were, and whether Senator Kerry would have required all four to be satisfied before he would have authorized an invasion of Iraq. The president could sensibly ask the following questions about each of the components of the Kerry policy.

The “rush to war.” The United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003. In late January 2002, a full 15 months earlier, President Bush cited the “axis of evil” ? including Iraq, North Korea, and Iran ? in his State of Union address. Shortly thereafter, in the first week of February 2002, the New York Times reported from Europe that spokesmen for the governments of Russia, China, France, and Germany were warning the United States and the Bush administration not to go to war against Iraq. So the president was seen even at this early point as having threatened war against Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address. This was followed by a vote in Congress to authorize action if Saddam did not disarm, interminable negotiations over the first U.N. resolution, and then over a second. If 15 months is a rush to war, the president should ask Senator Kerry how much more time he would have given Saddam Hussein.

Without allies. At the outset, it is important to note that the existence or nonexistence of allies was not always so important to Kerry, who voted against the 1991 Gulf War even though we had a much larger coalition ? including all our “traditional allies” ? in support of our action. In any event, there are now 30 countries currently assisting the coalition in Iraq, including of course Great Britain and Italy. Senator Kerry has not said what additional countries he would have brought into his coalition ? apparently because he has not been asked. The only major NATO allies not included are France and Germany. France, with six million Muslims in its population, and enjoying huge profits from selling goods to Iraq, has opposed the U.S. attack from the outset. The German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, was saved from defeat in the last election by his open and strident opposition to the U.S. invasion. The likelihood that either of those countries would have joined the coalition in Iraq is virtually nil, so the question nags whether, for Senator Kerry, the “rush to war” meant going to war under any circumstances without France and Germany. The president can clear this up by asking him whether he would have invaded Iraq without the support of France and Germany. This would help the American people understand how important to Senator Kerry are the views of other countries when the interests of the United States are at stake.

Without adequate equipment. Since this is the senator who voted against the $87 billion appropriation that included funds for equipping the troops, it is important to know the degree to which this vote depended on the two previous conditions. Is he saying that he would have voted to equip the troops if we hadn’t “rushed to war” ? whatever that means ? or if France and Germany had approved? The president should now ask Senator Kerry what exactly were the conditions under which he would have voted to equip the troops. It is important for the American people to understand from this complex thinker just what would have been necessary to get Senator Kerry’s vote for that $87 billion appropriation.

Without a plan to win the peace. In February 2003 ? a month before the invasion of Iraq ? President Bush spoke at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute. In an address covered fully by the news media, he stated that his plan for Iraq ? if the invasion should occur ? was to establish a democracy there that would be a beacon of hope for all the peoples of the Middle East. Sounds like a plan. It even sounds like vision. In fact, that plan is now working itself out in Iraq, which is now a fully sovereign nation. This apparently is not a sufficient plan for Senator Kerry. He implies that that he would have had a different and better plan. If so, the American people should hear it, especially if this is the plan he would implement as president. And again, if the news media won’t ask what it is, the President should do it for them.

? Peter J. Wallison is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a former White House counsel for Ronald Reagan and the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency.