Is Kerry Different from Bush on Iraq

by E. Wayne Merry

ìDonít reinforce failure.î This principle is basic in American military training. John Kerry certainly heard the dictum as a young naval officer and witnessed the consequences of its violation during his service in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential candidate has forgotten this most elementary of prescriptions in his approach to Iraq.

Kerry actually proposes a deepening of the American entanglement, with more troops, more efforts to engage reluctant allies, and a broad commitment to the very policies which alone might defeat George W. Bush at the polls in November.

Kerry voted in favor of the war to unseat Saddam Hussein. He can acknowledge that vote was a mistake--either because of misleading intelligence about weapons of mass destruction or just as a mistake. Or he can continue to support last yearís war but recognize the post-war occupation is no longer salvageable. So far, with only minor nuances almost invisible to potential voters, he has done neither.

Instead, Kerry and those aspiring to top jobs in his putative administration believe internationalization of the occupation can yet turn dross into gold. Especially unreal is the notion of engaging NATO in Iraq. The allianceís secretary-general recently warned that NATO is edging toward failure in its modest peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan, mostly limited to Kabul. More to the point, European governments which refused Washingtonís pressure to send troops to Iraq will not do so under a NATO fig leaf. Indeed, several governments may follow Spain to the exit.

While American media are dominated by the deepening tragedy in Iraq, Kerry parses his position with such care that even journalists following his campaign are not quite sure where he stands. Such an approach may work in the arcane mechanisms of the Senate, but not in a national referendum on George Bushís decision to take the country into a war it could have avoided.

Kerry wants to be seen as a strong and courageous leader with foreign affairs experience, but he reflects the schism in his own party toward the outside world. For generations, the Democratic Party has tried to balance internationalist and protectionist tendencies. In the previous century, Democrats took America into war far more often than did Republicans, most recently in Bill Clintonís campaigns in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Democrats proclaim solidarity with the worldís poor and sometimes undertake Wilsonian projects to transform other societies, as Clinton attempted in Russia and Haiti. In parallel, the partyís protectionist wing opposes giving the worldís poor any jobs that might remotely challenge employment here or opening American markets to competition from developing countries. Protectionist Democrats are hostile even toward our Canadian and Mexican neighbors, and their anti-Asian rhetoric comes close to xenophobia.

Kerry, like Clinton and other Democratic leaders before him, tries to bestride these conflicting forces within his party. One can hope Kerry knows that much of what he is saying about international issues, especially trade, is nonsense. If Kerry chooses either Richard Gephardt or John Edwards as his running mate, the Europeans who imagine Kerry is one of them just because he speaks French might one day look back on George Bush as the more internationalist president on economic issues.

Kerry is surrounded by his partyís foreign affairs elite who aggressively pursued American hegemony in a unipolar post-Cold War world, bombed Iraq daily for almost a decade, see Europeans as subordinates rather than as partners, and whose failures to respond adequately to the challenges of Saddam and al Qaeda were precursors to Bushís ìaxis of evilî and ìwar on terrorism.î On the Middle East, Kerry offers as blank a check to Israel as does Bush and evidently shares the belief that democracy and Westernization can be imposed on the Islamic world.

To American voters looking for a real choice on Iraq, Kerry and Bush both offer four more years of casualties, Iraqi hatred, alienation of the Islamic world and of traditional allies alike, and the deepening of precisely that quagmire in the Middle East that the neo-conservatives promised the war would avoid. This lack of choice is frustrating for real conservatives, who wonder how a Wilsonian foreign policy ever found a home in a Republican administration, and for true liberals, who opposed the war all along and may yet turn in real numbers to Ralph Nader.

For most Democrats, ìanyone but Bushî will apply in November. For independent voters, the election will be about Iraq, not Bush. Increasing numbers of centrist Americans, whether they thought the war against Saddam a mistake or not, now recognize failure in the occupation of Iraq and want a leader who can and will get America out without provoking chaos across the region. John Kerry currently offers only reinforcement of failure.

###

E. Wayne Merry is a former State Department and Pentagon official and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (www.realisticforeignpolicy.org).