Thursday, August 05, 2004

A few months ago, John Kerry remarked that several European leaders hoped he would win the US presidential election. When the Bush administration demanded names, the Democratic candidate clammed up. He was not about to rat out people who had spoken to him in confidence; but he also came across as a fool. As anybody could have told him, an assertion that is vague is as good as none at all.

Did Kerry learn? Last week in Boston he accepted the Democratic Party nomination, and in his acceptance speech (and in subsequent interviews) he was spectacularly vague on arguably the most important issue in this year's election: Iraq. In fact, his policy prescriptions were so muddled that one ventures to say they were as good as none at all.

What did Kerry say? First, he accused the Bush administration of misleading the public on Iraq and of entering a war on false premises: "Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so. As president I will ask the hard questions and demand hard evidence ... and ... bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The (US) never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to."

Kerry then outlined a way to bring US troops home: "I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers." And in a key passage, he declared: "I will build a stronger American military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops - not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure ... To all who serve in our armed forces today, I say, help is on the way."

Evidently, Kerry promised help to all but to the units already in Iraq, who, we might be permitted to assume, are overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. And why can we affirm that? Because Kerry virtually said so himself in a Washington Post op-ed piece on July 4, in which he wrote: "We know that a chief of staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, was right when he argued that more troops would be needed to establish security and win the peace in the weeks and months after Saddam Hussein's fall."

Confused? You're forgiven. After all, Kerry also said right after the Democratic convention, when asked whether more troops would be sent to Iraq: "I don't envision it." So Shinseki was right that more troops were needed, but Kerry just won't send any more. In fact, he will increase American forces by 40,000 soldiers, but has specifically ruled out dispatching them to Iraq.

That's quite an extraordinary decision, the barring of new troops from a theater of operations where Americans are fighting. No doubt Washington's friends and foes will take that to mean Kerry is only moderately serious about Iraq. See if he can build an alliance then, assuming he can build one at all, since who in his right mind would send troops merely to pull America's chestnuts out of the fire? But worse, it suggests that the Democratic candidate will say anything and its contrary to ensure he reaches the White House.

The troop question is important less for what it says about Kerry's utter lack of consistency, than for how it reflects changing attitudes in the US toward Iraq and the wider implications of the conflict. Kerry has essentially become a mirror for public opinion on Iraq, or his perception of it, so that whatever he feels is expedient at any given time merits being argued. And what is plainly occurring today is that the American public is growing tired of Iraq.

To blame Kerry for this would be unfair. On Iraq he may be untrustworthy, equivocal, uninspired, and consumed with self-puffery because of his days in Vietnam, but he isn't responsible for the Bush administration's mismanagement of a post-war situation that was supposed to herald a new era in the Middle East. To a large extent it will be up to George W. Bush to use the Republican convention to convincingly fill the yawning gaps on Iraq left by Kerry.

That may be a hard bargain if most Americans are fed up with the war. Gone, it seems, are the ambitions of last year, when regional democratization was still believable. Kerry threatens to soon reflect a tendency in the US to prematurely announce the job done and, as he put it, "bring our troops home."

As British historian Niall Ferguson wrote in his recent book "Colossus," in a passage on just this predisposition: The "time frame is the key to successful nation building. It is no coincidence that the countries where American military intervention has been most successful have been those in which the United States has maintained a prolonged military presence."

Obviously candidate Kerry is under no obligation to agree, though he has also said, "failure is not an option in Iraq." In fact he's said virtually everything there is to say about Iraq, staked out every position, simultaneously giving sustenance to those who want to remain and those who want to leave. But the real question is whether he will be as wishy-washy if he becomes president.

Never hold a candidate to what he says during a campaign, some insist. True, but the problem with John Kerry is that you're never quite sure what he actually said.

By Michael Young Daily Star staff

© The Daily Star 2004