Howard Dean knows the perils of trying to have it both ways on Iraq. After all, he has spent the last year clobbering John Kerry for supporting war in the Senate while denouncing it on the campaign trail. So imagine Dean's surprise when, at the October 9 Democratic debate in Phoenix, Dennis Kucinich turned the charge against him. "This morning, in The New York Times, wouldn't take a position on the eighty-seven billion dollars, and the governor says that he's still for keeping seventy thousand troops in Iraq," said Kucinich.
"Now, it's either right or wrong. If we're wrong to be there, as I believe we are, we should get our troops out." <snip> Today, however, the debate has largely shifted from war to postwar. Dean and other leading Democrats are calling the Iraq occupation a disaster that is breaking the bank, poisoning America's reputation around the world, and sending young men and women home in body bags. To which
Kucinich asks a logical question: If you think the postwar is so bad, why not bring Americans home? None of the leading Democrats want to withdraw from Iraq, but their refusal to plausibly answer Kucinich's question may be pushing them in that direction. Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, and--more ambiguously--Dean, all opposed President Bush's $87 billion reconstruction request because they said he lacked a plan to win the peace in Iraq.
But that's not true. Bush does have a plan, even if he's not quite honest about it: It's for the United States to stabilize and rebuild Iraq largely alone, by pouring in money and handing over security to hastily trained Iraqi forces. The Democratic candidates may dislike that strategy, but it is they who have no practical alternative. <snip>
Opposing Bush's reconstruction plan, and lacking a realistic one of their own, the Democratic candidates are vulnerable to Kucinich's logic. After all,
if you don't have a strategy for winning the peace in Iraq, why stay? Democratic public opinion is clearly moving in this direction. A CBS poll in late August found that 53 percent of Democrats wanted the United States to either increase troop levels in Iraq or hold them steady, versus 37 percent who wanted to decrease the number. By last week, that figure had reversed itself. In a late October Washington Post/ABC News poll, 54 percent of Democrats said the "U.S. should withdraw forces from Iraq to avoid casualties," while only 40 percent wanted to keep them there.
<snip>
The unhappy truth is that, by mishandling postwar Iraq and alienating much of the world, the Bush administration has left the United States with two bad options: rebuild Iraq largely alone, at great cost in money and lives (and with no guarantee of success), or withdraw largely alone, in a Vietnam-like defeat.
The leading Democratic presidential contenders, who like most candidates hate tough choices, are trying to pretend they don't have to make one. But the longer they oppose the Bush reconstruction strategy, the more they will find themselves pushed toward the alternative, which is no reconstruction at all.
On Iraq, Kucinich now represents the Democratic vanguard. Unless the other candidates face reality, he could soon represent the Democratic mainstream. Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.
https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20031117&s=trb111703(Free subscription for 14 days)
On edit: direct no subscription link:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=xSg%2B4YZ8yEY8HEBUnb0nlh%3D%3D:bounce: :bounce: And this from a socially liberal non-Progressive magazine mostly read by Dems! Excellent!
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