Sunday, August 01, 2004
The deconstruction of the Kerry Doctrine
I have been out of the country for more than a week, and therefore have missed virtually all of the mass media coverage of the Democratic convention, other than little snippets from the wire services available via Blackberry. I have, however, read some of the commentary around Kerry's acceptance speech, particularly as it relates to foreign policy, and I put up a link dump of the posts that I had read a couple of days ago.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was working my way up to yet another French dinner, Wretchard of the Belmont Club posted an extremely incisive deconstruction of those portions of Kerry's speech that purport to distinguish his willingness to use force from that of his would-be predecessor, George W. Bush. Having reviewed the back-and-forth among various writers who have tried to figure out the circumstances under which President Kerry would draw first blood, Wretchard cuts to the heart of the matter:
Good questions, to which we need clear answers rather than the open-ended claim that Kerry Administration diplomacy will be more deft (and there is no reason to doubt, by the way, that it wouldn't be).
The Bush Administration has suffered in its diplomacy and its political fortunes because it has not defined the victory conditions in the war on terror, or even defined the enemy particularly well. However, we do know that Bush will wage wars with the intent of winning them. Will Kerry? If so, why the constant bleating about Vietnam?
Read the whole thing.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was working my way up to yet another French dinner, Wretchard of the Belmont Club posted an extremely incisive deconstruction of those portions of Kerry's speech that purport to distinguish his willingness to use force from that of his would-be predecessor, George W. Bush. Having reviewed the back-and-forth among various writers who have tried to figure out the circumstances under which President Kerry would draw first blood, Wretchard cuts to the heart of the matter:
The real question is ... whether [Kerry] is at minimum someone who will retaliate after a first strike. In framing his policy in terms of how he would respond to a hypothetical attack on America, John Kerry glosses over how he intends to respond to the actual attack of September 11. That event is curiously undefined in his tale of events. If the attack on Manhattan was an act of war how would John Kerry win it? Is it already won and if so, did George Bush win it? If September 11 is not a first strike in John Kerry's eyes, then what is his theoretical threshold for decisive action?
Good questions, to which we need clear answers rather than the open-ended claim that Kerry Administration diplomacy will be more deft (and there is no reason to doubt, by the way, that it wouldn't be).
Kerry should clarify how he plans to win, if not the present war, then at least a future one, if it comes according to his standard. The cast of characters, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are unlikely to change. The electorate should be granted a glimpse into his roadmap to victory and whether he believes in the concept itself as distinct from mere retaliation. Any brawler with fists can retaliate but it requires a Commander in Chief with a strategy to lead nations to victory. Even Bill Clinton was prepared to retaliate against Osama Bin Laden for the USS Cole attack by firing hundreds of cruise missiles at his training camps. But George Bush tried to defeat him and for this stood condemned. It is this precise striving for victory, not any single act of retaliation that has made George Bush so illegitimate in the liberal mind. For liberals retaliation is soley used to "send a message"; it always an invitation to negotiation, like the ones Johnson sent Ho Chi Minh without reply; it is never part of the solution itself. In this curious mental universe, force is immoral unless it is also pointless. John Kerry's self-chosen identification with the Vietnam War is a strangely ambiguous image, which escapes being tragic only for so long as you allow only questions for which there can be no answers. (emphasis added)
The Bush Administration has suffered in its diplomacy and its political fortunes because it has not defined the victory conditions in the war on terror, or even defined the enemy particularly well. However, we do know that Bush will wage wars with the intent of winning them. Will Kerry? If so, why the constant bleating about Vietnam?
Read the whole thing.
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