What the Democrats lack on Iraq

[Matt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47659-2004Jan25.html

What the Democrats Lack on Iraq

By Fred Hiatt
Monday, January 26, 2004; Page A19

To appreciate the Democrats' evolving case against the war in Iraq, there is no better place to look than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's impassioned denunciation. The senator's case, laid out in a recent speech and an article on this page Jan. 18, is comprehensive and angry. It says the war may prove to be "one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy." It accuses the Bush administration of being dishonest as well as wrong.




And, in what it does not contain, it points to a gap in the Democratic message that whoever emerges as presidential nominee eventually will have to fill.

Kennedy's most inflammatory accusations have to do with alleged political motivations for the war or its timing. "Soon Karl Rove joined the public debate, and war with Iraq became all but certain," the senator says. And: "Election-year politics prevail, but they should not have prevailed over foreign policy and national security." And: "There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative and no compelling reason to go to war. . . . But the election timetable was clearly driving the marketing of the product." If Karl Rove -- that is, politics -- drove Iraq policy, then President Bush would merit not only defeat, as Kennedy says, but impeachment. But much of the rest of Kennedy's indictment undercuts the idea of a politically motivated war. For, in his effort to show that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an excuse for war, the senator argues that much of the Bush administration had believed for years that Saddam Hussein had to go.

In 1998, as Kennedy says, many of the people who were to become the backbone of the Bush administration signed a letter urging action against the regime. And from the moment he took office, Kennedy maintains, Bush was decided on his goal: "The agenda was clear: find a rationale to end Saddam's regime." In fact, the record is not so unambiguous; there was debate within the administration, and at first a policy of "smart sanctions" won out. But if Kennedy was right in his portrayal of the war as ideologically based and going back years, it would be hard to fit that into a portrayal of policy being driven by tactical political needs.

In either case, the policy could be wrong, and Kennedy lays out several reasons why he thinks it has been harmful: It has distracted the United States from the fight against al Qaeda and "made our people more vulnerable to attack." It has overstretched and stressed the Army. It has cost too many lives and too many billions of dollars that should have been spent at home. It has frayed alliances. The administration's false prewar claims about Hussein's weapons and ties to al Qaeda have damaged U.S. credibility.

These assessments, most of which are shared to one degree or another by the leading Democratic presidential candidates, will and should be debated during the campaign. But there is one other brief sentence in Kennedy's indictment that deserves attention. "Regime change in Iraq did become the policy of the Clinton administration," he notes, "but not by war." Yes, regime change was the policy of President Bill Clinton, and of most Democrats in Congress at that time; it was not just the obsession of right-wing ideologues. There was a bipartisan recognition that Hussein posed a unique danger to the United States, to Mideast stability and to the Iraqi people. If the dictator was not constrained, Clinton said in 1998, "he will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal." It's true that Clinton's policy was "not by war," though with its no-fly zones and regular bombardments the United States was in a state of semi-war with Iraq throughout his presidency. It's also true that Clinton didn't know how to implement his stated policy of regime change -- that Bush inherited a failing strategy with regard to Iraq.

Everything we have learned since Hussein's downfall confirms that sanctions, even more than was known, impoverished most Iraqis and isolated civil society while doing little to inhibit the regime's gangsterism. And, even if sanctions and inspections were effective in checking Hussein's rearming, they were unsustainable over time, eroding when Bush took over and temporarily strengthened by his credible threat to use force.

Some candidates now suggest they would have removed Hussein, but in a better way: operating through the United Nations or a Mideast coalition. That would be ideal but quite possibly not achievable, even by a president more dedicated to alliances than Bush. U.N. members include the Saddam Husseins of the world, and as Clinton learned when he decided to rescue Kosovo, U.N. permission cannot always be secured even for the most righteous mission.

The purpose of recalling the earlier bipartisan consensus on the threat posed by Hussein, and the failure to defuse it, is not to score some debating point. Whoever becomes president in this era may face a similar threat. The arguments against going to war in such a case -- in any case -- are powerful. But to be for regime change and against war can be only the beginning of the conversation. What Kennedy has laid out for the Democrats is a powerful critique; it is not yet a policy.

[Rspaight]

This is a good point, as indeed the sanctions/inspections were becoming increasingly untenable and harmful to the Iraqi people.

So what should have been done? I'm not convinced by the rush to war. (And it *was* a rush to war -- a frantic, fear-mongering, screw-the-rest-of-the-world rush to war.) I do believe that honest diplomatic efforts could have resulted in a wide coalition, or even an exile deal for Saddam. If this was such a pressing national security issue, and nothing to do with strategic influence and raiding Saddam's coffers (which now reside with the Treasury Department), why not work with the French and Russians to see that they saw some return from their oil contracts under the new regime (which was likely behind their opposition to the war)?

Regime change isn't really the issue, IMO, it's how Bush went about it.

Ryan

[Ron]

Regime change isn't really the issue, IMO, it's how Bush went about it.

While I agree that how the Bush team went about it is *an* issue, so, too, is "regime change." The country is not yet pacified, let alone ready for democracy. The real fun, should Iraq ever *be* pacified, won't begin until all factions start duking it out in earnest over a bigger slice of the pie. All to say that I'm not so sure that "regime change" is workable--or appropriate. Or right. Or legal. Or moral.

Oh sure, I'm glad Saddam's gone and all, but I'm very sceptical about the chances of success for democracy in Iraq. And while the succeeding government[s] may be better than Saddam's, it will certainly be debateable just how much better. Americans are [have always been] such babies, such "do-gooders." But not every problem can be fixed. Not every bad/dangerous leader can be replaced. Democracy is not appropriate everywhere. The UN sanctions [do-goodism] probably killed more children in Iraq than Saddam ever did.