I was going to Fisk John Kerry’s op-ed on his strategy for Iraq, but I’ve been beaten to the punch by Stephen Greene, who has already done an excellent job of it.
Suffice it to say, Kerry’s piece combines several outright mischaracterizations and shows why Kerry must not be put in charge of running the rebuilding of Iraq, no less the US itself. A quick run-through of where Kerry is wrong:
Kerry thinks that we don’t know what our larger goal is in Iraq, when it has been clear from the outset: we are not only there to remove the Ba’athist thugs from power, but to build a democratic Iraq that will act as a natural epicenter of reform in the Middle East. Bush made this clear at his speech to the AEI in February of 2003.
Kerry also assumes that bringing in NATO would increase international troop levels in Iraq. This is mistaken. Of the NATO powers, almost all except France and Germany have troops in Iraq as it is. Neither the French nor the Germans will lift a finger to help us in Iraq in any substantive way as it would mean that the radical anti-war fringe that keeps them in power would quickly turn on them.
Kerry finally thinks that the American people are "confused about our goals in Iraq" – this is not the case. The American people, excepting those who have drunk deeply from the “blood for oil” Kool-Aid know exactly why we’re in Iraq, and a majority (around 60%) support our actions in Iraq and have since Day 1. We’re disproving the terrorists theory that a few casualties will have us running home with our tails between our legs. We’ve captured or killed hundreds of militants in Iraq, many of them foreign fighters. We’re winning this war, and the number of casualties, while each one being a tragedy in itself, is dramatically low compared to the boldness of the mission.
If Kerry had stated that Iraq is not Vietnam, that he would not under any circumstances bow to terrorism, and harshly rebuked Senator Kennedy’s inappropriate and stupid comments, I would have been willing to give him credit. Unfortunately Kerry continues to stick to the same old ideas about Iraq that would quickly prove to be no better than the status quo. Furthermore, despite Kerry’s rhetoric that he would never surrender, can we really trust him not to? The Democrats have a strong anti-war base, and if another attack were to occur there’s no telling that Kerry would have the political will to keep our troops in Iraq. He would likely shift the burden to the UN, which would quickly result in more dead US soldiers, more dead Iraqis, and any hope of a democratic Iraq dashed.
John Kerry already advocated the pullout of US soldiers in a conflict against tyranny for political reasons. There’s very little evidence that would reassure one that he wouldn’t do so again.
