Andrew C. McCarthy, who writes for the conservative National Review, describes as "stirring" Bob Kerrey’s article on democracy in Iraq. McCarthy praises Kerrey for “eloquently arguing that we must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq,” an article McCarthy notes “will win him no fans among the hard Left that today controls his party”.But then McCarthy says:
Does Kerrey really think such a “democracy” is worth Americans fighting for? Well, maybe not. For after singing its praises, he abruptly shifts course[, writing that] "Jim Webb [(D.-VA)] said something during his [successful] campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn’t exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism."
Hard to quarrel with that. If Iraq proves anything, it is that we Americans lack the patience for long, difficult occupations — especially if our leaders fail to convince us that our own security, as opposed to a better life for the occupied, is at stake. . .
But here’s something else Kerrey doesn’t confront. Maybe he’s right that you don’t have to occupy a country to fight terrorism. But you do have to occupy a country to, as he puts it, impose democracy. . . the Iraqi chapter in the war on terror has been conducted, since Saddam’s expulsion, as a Wilsonian [Wilson pictured, above] experiment. It assumes . . . that everyone craves freedom. . . If the experiment were being conducted by liberals, rather than by George W. Bush, Democrats would be its staunchest defenders (and conservatives its wariest skeptics).
1 comment:
Dick Baker says:
[After reading Kerrey's original article], I was particularly struck by [his] final paragraph, which echoes the broad strategy I recall discussing with you at one of our lunches quite a while ago:
"The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them."
And incidentally, the worst thing about the Taguba article in the New Yorker (beyond the callous inhumanity it reveals) is that it makes it almost impossible to trust this administration (or many of the bureaucrats involved in implementing their policies) with the kind of really tough-minded by sophisticated and carefully controlled policies of interdiction and assassination that would be required to stop the terrorists in their safe-havens and training sites. Yet another example of the compounding effects of strategic blunders.
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