Why Kerry Is Right About Iraq - Zakaria

[WillyT]

<snip>

By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page A15

John Kerry isn't being entirely honest about his views on Iraq. But neither is President Bush. "Knowing what we know now," Bush asked, "would have supported going into Iraq?" The real answer is, of course, "no." But that's just as true for Bush as for Kerry.

We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Is Bush suggesting that despite this knowledge he would still have concluded that Iraq constituted a "grave and gathering threat" that required an immediate, preventive war? Please. Even if Bush had come to this strange conclusion, no one would have listened to him. Without the threat of those weapons, there would have been no case to make to the American people or to world nations.

There were good reasons to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, but it was the threat of those weapons that created the international, legal, strategic and urgent rationale for a war. There were good reasons why intelligence agencies all over the world -- including those of Arab governments -- believed that Hussein had these weapons. But he didn't.

The more intelligent question is (given what we knew at the time): Was toppling Hussein's regime a worthwhile objective? Bush's answer is yes; Howard Dean's is no. Kerry's answer is that it was a worthwhile objective but was disastrously executed. For this "nuance" Kerry has been attacked from both the right and the left. But it happens to be the most defensible position on the subject.

<snip>

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6678-2004Aug16.html

Interesting, no???

:shrug:

[A_Possum]

1. hah

nice, fareed.

"We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Is Bush suggesting that despite this knowledge he would still have concluded that Iraq constituted a "grave and gathering threat" that required an immediate, preventive war? Please."

Good one.

[flpoljunkie]

42. Fareed really nails down all Bush's failures in one must read paragraph!

Bush's position is that if Kerry agrees with him that Hussein was a problem, then Kerry agrees with his Iraq policy. Doing something about Iraq meant doing what Bush did. But is that true? Did the United States have to go to war before the weapons inspectors had finished their job? Did it have to junk the U.N. process? Did it have to invade with insufficient troops to provide order and stability in Iraq? Did it have to occupy a foreign country with no cover of legitimacy from the world community? Did it have to ignore the State Department's postwar planning? Did it have to pack the Iraqi Governing Council with unpopular exiles, disband the army and engage in radical de-Baathification? Did it have to spend a fraction of the money allocated for Iraqi reconstruction -- and have that be mired in charges of corruption and favoritism? Was all this an inevitable consequence of dealing with the problem of Saddam Hussein?

[K-W]

2. Exactly right, Kerry is wrong, but it is the best answer politically.

Like it or lump it, John Kerry's job for us is to beat Bush.

[Wheelie_Alex]

3. Not with nuance!

The majority of voters are not going to be won over by nuance. A lot of us are going to vote for Kerry regardless. The ones harboring doubts are not going to be swayed by what amounts to nothing more than a strong "maybe."

[K-W]

5. It would be nice if Kerry had an even more rhetorically powerful option,

But that just isnt in the cards. What would you like him to say?

Kerry has 3 choices:

1. Endorse Bush's actions
2. Say he wouldnt have gone into Iraq.
3. Say he isnt totally against the war, but Bush has done a horrible job in every aspect of it.

He has chosent the only real option he has.

Obviously praising your opponent isnt a good idea. #2, while the right answer would be politically insane given the fear and paranoia of voters. The voters need to feel that Kerry would be willing to go to war for them, most voters are under the false impression that the world is different now and we need strong leaders and for them strong means tough and willing to use force.

So he has chosen the only option he could. Yes a simpler answer would be better, but a simpler answer doesnt exist.

[kiahzero]

7. I think you're wrong about what Kerry's saying

He's said that he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, but would have voted for the IWR, because he felt it was necessary for the inspections to be successful.

[Wheelie_Alex]

11. That is the "semantics" I am talking about.

Every time he says that, a lot of people think he is bullshitting them and trying to avoid being pinned down. I deal with a lot of people in my business. Not too many are impressed by the "semantics"
but a lot of them see it as "politico-speak" and don't like it.

I am sure that we would all like to click the heels of our ruby red shoes together and wish for a landslide, but I think a landslide is dangerous to even consider. It is going to be close, and being seen as trying to bullshit people won't help.

[K-W]

13. What on earth do you want him to say?

What is this magical phrase on the IRaq war that will allow Kerry to not be spun by republicans and the media?

[Wheelie_Alex]

16. Too Late Now!

If he had said "Yes!" and left it at that. Sure, there would have been some yelps and shit from the Repubs, but the voters would have appreciated the clarity. But noooo. He had to explain his answer, "I voted to give the President the authority, blah, blah, blah." That is what is making him look bad. Trying to give himself an out.

People will follow Kerry! I know they will, if he sticks to one direction. If they think he is going to lead them around in circles, they will back away.

[K-W]

17. Are you kidding?

You think a presidential candidate could get away with answering a question about one of the biggest issues in the campaign just by saying "Yes"?

You think that would fly with anyone, anywhere, of any party?

[Wheelie_Alex]

21. Not a simple "yes". per se,

Per se, I was just looking for an excuse to use that. Anyway, "Yes, but I would have done it differently" like he did say. The whole "voted to give the President authority" is what is really chapping my ass. That is what is being used as jokes and in calling bullshit on Kerry by the people I talk to during the day.

[K-W]

25. But it is the truth. You want Kerry to lie?

The IWR was not a vote for the war, it was in fact a vote for authority. And if it sounds a little fishy, its because it is a little fishy. Congress passed the buck.

So yah, if you want to critisize Kerry for that, fine. It is valid to a point. But why would you critisize him now for explaining what he did, and defending his decisions?

He voted to give the president authority to use force with instructions to do so as a last resort to back up inspections. Kerry claims now that he still thinks that the threat of force was neccessary to support inspections, and thus he stands by his vote. It is not his fault that Bush abused that authority.

Its actually a very good case. And not a flip-flop at all. It was a smart bill for the democrats, they let Bush be the one to screw things up.

[Wheelie_Alex]

30. Is it just me or does something stink?

If Kerry voted to give the President the authority and did not think it would lead to war, then his judgement is seriously in doubt. IT WAS A VOTE TO GO TO WAR! Pure and simple. All of that "Authority" bullshit was just cover.

Bush was chomping at the bit, stomping his feet, shaking with anticipation to go to war. It was obvious to the American people, but it was not obvious to Kerry?

Come on. Don't serve me a turd in milk and call it corn flakes.

[K-W]

33. Fine, if you want to spin, go ahead.

I thought our side might be better, silly me.

Kerry voted to give the president authority to use force to support inspections. That is the issue he voted on. He thought inspections were important, and that the threat of force was needed to back them up. He didnt vote to go to war. That is a LIE.

If your memory is so good, do you remember that Bush did say he would only go to war as a last resort? Do you remember that he staged that UN BS. Things just arent as simple as you want them to be. Kerry knew Bush wanted to go to war, Im sure. I dont think he thought he would do it so insanely. I dont think alot of people did. Maybe you did, congrats. Thats no excuse to lie about kerry.

meanwhile, stop calling a vote for giving the president authority a vote for the war. We have the facts on our side, we dont need to mislead and lie, so kindly stop doing it.

[Wheelie_Alex]

35. He voted to give Bush the authority to go to war,

and Bush went to war. My child is now wounded and scarred as result.
There are reasons why I feel this way.

[K-W]

38. Bush could have gone to war without that vote, remember that.

The simple fact of the matter is, Kerry voted to give legitimacy to the threat of force in the inspection process. It is not his fault that Bush abused that vote amongst many other things. Bush abused intelligence, he abused congress, he abused the american people, he abused international and domestic laws.

Kerry was just doing his job, he voted for a bill that he agreed with, that told the president he could use force only if it was a last resort.

You can say that Kerry was fooled. You can say that Kerry should have been more skeptical. You could even say that because of that you dont trust him to make decisions as president. I dont agree per se, but you can say that.

But you cant say that he voted for the war, he didnt. That is a lie that helps only the republicans.

Kerry didnt give Bush any power that he didnt already have.

[alittlelark]

39. Something does stink

and it reeks of 'down home' pseudo-intellectualism regarding a candidate.

[kiahzero]

43. "Psuedo-intellectualism?"

How is honestly discussing what a law did "psuedo-intellectualism?"

[kiahzero]

31. If I may address one minor point

Congress didn't pass the buck as much as they are attacked for. Under the War Powers Act, the President has the authority to send troops anywhere he pleases. Within 60 days, he must recieve authorization to continue the action from Congress, or the troops must be pulled back.

The Iraq War Resolution simply granted this authorization before any troops were deployed.

[Wheelie_Alex]

32. My views on this whole IWR thing are very personal.

My daughter was wounded by a grenade in Iraq last month. Kerry's vote and the President's subsequent actions are responsible for that, so please, forgive my passion in this.

[kiahzero]

34. Definitely understandable

Is she OK?

My girlfriend's brother, and another close friend of mine, are both being deployed to Iraq, so I understand at least a little of what you're going through.

[Wheelie_Alex]

36. Things could have been worse,

face, arm and leg hit by shrapnel. Looked like she would be 100% until a few days ago. She is having some vision problems in one eye all of a sudden. :(

[kiahzero]

19. I'm trying to bullshit no one

I'm trying to speak the truth. Sometimes the truth is complicated, and I don't think that the American people need to be talked down to by the candidates.

I think it's offensive that the media is selling this line that candidates need to have five-second soundbites of their positions, to the detriment of the public policy. But I think it's even more offensive that so many people have bought the line and made it their own.

[K-W]

22. Alot of democrats are quick to buy into Bush's attacks it seems.

And would rather Kerry speak like an idiot than fight for intelligent political discourse in this country.

[kiahzero]

24. Agreed

I've heard people insist that the vote on the Iraq War Resolution was, in fact, a vote to send troops into Iraq... here on DU. It's ridiculous.

[K-W]

14. Agreed, that doesnt make me wrong.

Kerry is saying that the ability to use force wasnt wrong, which pretty much means force could have been used. Bush just messed everything up.

[mike_c]

41. this has been so thoroughly debunked that it's sad to see...

...it raise its sorry head again.

"he felt it was necessary for the inspections to be successful."

The inspections had already "succeeded." Iraq was already disarmed, perhaps by the early '90's but certainly by 1998. Saddam Hussein had already agreed to an "unconditional" return of the U.N. inspectors to certify this (and the U.S. had objected to their return!).

There was absolutely no need for any threat of war in order to force disarmament or weapons inspections down Iraq's throat. They were already complying with the disarmament and inspections mandates.

Why are so many people willfully ignoring the truth about Iraq?

[kiahzero]

44. There was reason to think otherwise

It hasn't been thoroughly debunked... the "debunkers" refuse to read the statements of people like Scott Ritter, so that they can continue to make claims like "The inspections ahd already 'suceeded.'"

[kiahzero]

4. Actually, he seems to be saying that Kerry is right

And that Bush and (his example) Dean are wrong.

Was toppling Hussein's regime a worthwhile objective? Bush's answer is yes; Howard Dean's is no. Kerry's answer is that it was a worthwhile objective but was disastrously executed. For this "nuance" Kerry has been attacked from both the right and the left. But it happens to be the most defensible position on the subject.

[K-W]

6. Thats now what he is saying at all.

"John Kerry isn't being entirely honest about his views on Iraq. But neither is President Bush. "Knowing what we know now," Bush asked, "would have supported going into Iraq?" The real answer is, of course, "no." But that's just as true for Bush as for Kerry. "

He is saying that Kerry is right, politically, on his stance, not that Kerry is right that he would have gone into Iraq. Dean has the luxery of the fact that he is not running for president right now, so he doesnt have to use the most defensible position.

[kiahzero]

8. Perhaps

I'm not sure that's what Zakaria's saying - it seems to contradict what he's saying later on in the piece. But that sentence doesn't make sense to me right now, interpreted any other way.

Then again, maybe he's saying that Kerry wouldn't support going into Iraq because we know now how badly it's turning out?

The reason I'm hesitant to agree with you on your interpretation (that he's talking about defensible politically below) is because Zakaria doesn't discuss politics when he discusses the defensibility of Kerry's position. He discusses the actual policy - what was the best policy for dealing with Hussein - and concludes that Kerry was right to argue that we needed to eventually remove the regime while simultaneously arguing that Bush did so in a very poor manner.

[K-W]

9. Fair enough, maybe im thrown off by the first section.

If he's saying the war was right, he is certainly wrong.

[kiahzero]

18. It depends how you mean "war"

From reading a lot of Zakaria's collected columns, I get the impression that he believes the following:

a) The sanctions weren't working - they were hurting innocent Iraqis while entrenching Hussein.
b) Because of (a), since the sanctions weren't working, they needed to be dropped.
c) Hussein was not a threat to the world community while the sanctions were up.
d) Because of (b) and (c), Hussein needs to be removed as soon as possible, so that the sanctions can be removed as soon as possible.

Now, my primary disagreement with this logic is that there is a second option under (b): the sanctions could possibly be reformed so that Hussein could remain contained while alleviating the strain on the innocent Iraqi people. But there's no guarantee a new sanction regime would be any better than the first.

So, ignoring my objection to section (b), it comes to the idea that Saddam needs to go.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying what Zakaria eventually comes to in this piece:
"Strategy is execution," Louis Gerstner, former chief executive of IBM, American Express and RJR Nabisco, has often remarked. In fact, it's widely understood in the business world that having a good objective means nothing if you implement it badly. "Unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they're pointless," writes Larry Bossidy, former chief executive of Honeywell.

If you do not separate the abstract idea of "Going to war to remove Hussein from power" with the actual implementation of this idea done by the Bush Administration, the four of us (Zakaria, Kerry, you, and I) are all in agreement - this war was wrong.

However, Zakaria accepted the abstract idea, if I recall correctly, long before Bush started pushing for action in Iraq. I'm not entirely sure whether Kerry saw it the same way, if he had thinking similar to mine, or something completely different.

Sorry if I'm babbling a little - I seem to be a bit verbose this evening.

[K-W]

20. No need to apologize, thank you for the post.

You summed it up quite well.

[JI7]

10. Fareed Zakaria for deputy sec of state

so in the future he can be sec of state.

[faithnotgreed]

12. thank you fareed.

[UdoKier]

15. Not interesting. False premise.

Everybody who was at all informed back in 2002 knew that there were few if any WMD. The intelligence was out there that said that there was not clear evidence of weapons stockpiles.

Bush & Powell's lies were transparent then, so why is my intelligence being insluted by writers acting as though something new has been diescovered (the lack of WMD)?

[kiahzero]

23. No clear evidence doesn't mean it didn't exist

The inspectors never should have left in 1998, and it was good that they went back in 2002 to finish the job. Unfortunately, Bush cut of the inspections prematurely.

To say that someone "knew" that there were few if any WMDs is making a far stronger assertion than you should feel comfortable making. Scott Ritter, who was probably the 'anti-war' person most qualified to speak on the matter, didn't even say that.

[UdoKier]

26. We knew that Bush and Powell were lying A LOT well before the war.

And the possibility of amybe possibly some weapons existing in a non-terrorist country which has NEVER committed an act of aggression against the US, and which has left its neighbors alone for 12 years is NOT just cause for war. There is no way to justify that invasion. The WMD LIES are the most obvious evidence of the war's fundamental corruption, but there are scores of other examples.

[K-W]

28. Agreed, but that doesnt change the fact that Iraq could have had them.

Sure they didnt have alot of the stuff that was being said, but they could have had something. Most people think where there is smoke there is fire. There seemed to be good cause for inspections.

Bush abused this situation to get his war. Just because his war was wrong doesnt mean that everything involved was wrong. We shouldnt get carried away.

[kiahzero]

29. Right

I wasn't saying there was a case for war - I was saying that we needed to get inspectors back in there. Don't misunderstand me - I was against this war from the beginning. I just don't think it's accurate to say that if one was informed, one should have felt justified "knowing" that there were no weapons.

I suspecting there were no weapons, mainly due to the statements of Hussein Kamel. However, also based on his statements, one could reasonably suspect that Iraq had restarted work on some of the chemical and biological weapons programs (the nuclear stuff was bullshit, and was always bullshit). The inspections were necessary to neutralize this possibility.

[moondust]

27. Kerry

voted to put the club in the thug's hands and shake it in the air if necessary or lay it down if not necessary or as a last resort use it but only if necessary. A true leader would have shown restraint and wisdom when entrusted with such awesome responsibility.

Kerry did not vote for a war even though the Rethugs keep repeating that he did so just like Bush*.

(I personally would never trust Bush* to do the right thing.)

[Hippo_Tron]

37. The answer for Bush would be no but for different reasons than mentioned

Right now Bush deeply regrets going into Iraq (or at least when he did) because if he hadn't, he basically could have sealed up his re-election.

[WillyT]

40. Morning Kick !!!

:kick:

[DrFunkenstein]

45. Actually, Kerry Specifically Disagreed With Regime Change

His rationale was for enforcing inspections, but what the hell do I know?

[WiseMen]

48. Sorry Honorable Dr., Kerry was a longtime supporter of regime change.

Under Clinton, Kerry led the push to make regime change U.S. policy --
but via covert support for internal opposition, not by war.

[no name no slogan]

46. Zakaria = Thomas Freidman of Foreign Policy

Fareed Zakaria is little more than an apologist for the bipartisan imperialism that has passed as "foreign policy" in this country over the last 20 years. He is a firm believer in the "American Empire" and believes that the US needs to retain a military force in the Middle East-- which was the MAIN reason that OBL turned against the US in the first place!

But still, even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.

[Larkspur]

47. As kerry supporters used to say, the Wash Post is a Moonie paper

and not worth reading. Interesting that they'd read it now. Of course Moonie supported Bush's war, like Kerry does.

[Carni]

49. Knock knock...

Anyone residing within all that hot air?

Get your facts straight... The WASHINGTON TIMES is the Moonie paper not the WA Post but thanks for your brilliant analysis.

[Julien Sorel]

50. The Washington Times, not the Post, is the Moonie paper.

Your candidate got crushed like a rotten eggshell. Time to grow up and act like a big person.