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Editorial: The debate/Substantial Kerry, peevish Bush
(from the Minneapolis Star Tribune)
October 2, 2004 ED1002
Sen. John Kerry and President Bush offered the nation a refreshingly substantive debate Thursday night on who is better qualified to handle this nation's foreign policy. The central issues were, of course, the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Most of the substance came from Kerry, who displayed far greater depth of knowledge and offered far more specific proposals for winning both. Bush was defensive and peevish, and spent extraordinary amounts of his time stressing how hard the job is and how wrong it is for Kerry to "send mixed signals" to America's enemies, especially on Iraq.
That second point is wrong on two counts. First, a presidential campaign is precisely the time to evaluate an incumbent president's policies, and few issues are more important to discuss than Bush's Iraq policy. As Gen. John Abazaid, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said last Sunday on "Meet the Press," this discussion is at the heart of the freedom that America's men and women in uniform seek to protect.
Second, there is nothing "mixed" about the signals Kerry is sending. Americans who watched the debate Thursday night heard him say: Bush made a "colossal error of judgment" in attacking Iraq and "rushed to war without a plan to win the peace." But now we must win there, and we can win, but to do so we must pursue a more intelligent course than Bush has done. We must forswear any long-term designs on Iraqi territory and Iraqi oil. We must reach out to the Muslim world, which has a stake in preventing Iraq from becoming a failed state. We must reach out to Europe, which has a stake in preventing chaos on its doorstep. We must quickly ratchet up the training schedule for Iraqi police and military forces. We must retake the "no-go" zones in places like Fallujah. We must get the United Nations more involved.
Bush continued to insist that Iraq is the center of the war on terror. Kerry responded that Iraq "wasn't even close" to the center of the war on terror when Bush invaded it. The center, Kerry said, is Afghanistan. Yet Bush has deployed 10 times as many troops to Iraq as to Afghanistan to push the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the man whose Al-Qaida actually attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. It is Kerry who is on firm ground here, not Bush.
Kerry criticized Bush policies in other areas that mirror points independent experts have made in recent days: The president isn't aggressively seeking to contain Russia's "loose nukes." He has mishandled the effort to contain the threat from North Korea's nuclear ambitions and to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The president has stretched America's military forces so thin the United States couldn't afford to send troops to Sudan if that were to become necessary.
These are important topics that Americans need to hear about, topics that have found too little space in newspapers and too little time in broadcast journalism during this smear-dominated campaign. When Kerry went through his litany of issues, it finally seemed as though someone of stature were taking voters seriously, giving them something more than sound bites. Rudy Giuliani, on spin patrol for Bush, accused Kerry of "lecturing" voters. No, he was treating voters like the adults they are, capable of thinking seriously about the foreign-policy issues the next president must deal with. Kerry made a compelling case that Bush has done a poor job and he's capable of doing better.
We have a worry as this campaign progresses, however. The November issue of the Atlantic magazine has a long article, "Karl Rove in a corner," that details despicable methods used by Bush's political adviser in past races that have been close: whispering campaigns questioning an opponent's sexual orientation or suggesting involvement in affairs or pedophilia; the distribution of anonymous, over-the-top lies about his own candidate, then accusing the opponent of being behind them, etc. This race is close, and the stakes couldn't be higher. The election should be decided on the sort of substance displayed in Thursday night's debate, not by the smear artists.
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