I just caught Richard Gephardt on Fox News Sunday: In response to virtually every question, Gephardt brought up Kerry’s experience in Vietnam and said that the electorate wants “a change in direction” — and not much else. Memo to Gephardt (and the Kerry campaign): We all know about Kerry’s Vietnam experiences.* If Kerry’s going to win (and it’s starting to look unlikely), he’s got to start talking about the future. He’s gotta tell us what he will do once elected. [There’s more.]
I mean, I’m all for fighting a “smarter” war on terror. But what the heck does that mean? It’s not enough to send Bob Graham — a Democrat I trust on the issue — to Russertville if all he’s going to offer are vague assurances that Kerry will be Bush, but better. We need to know the principles that will guide Kerry as he confronts an uncertain world. Kerry, not a surrogate, must spell them out.
We know Bush’s principles — see Citizen Smash for a good, recent summary. (Despite reports to the contrary, however, there is no such thing as a Bush “doctrine”; more on this later.) Most Americans — myself included — might quibble with Bush on the margins; but most Americans — myself, again, included — think them right in the broad strokes. What’s Kerry offering? What are Kerry’s principles? Does he propose Bush-with-a-twist, or a whole new drink? I’m still not sure.
Let’s be clear: I’m not interested in hearing what Kerry will do in present situation “x” — “x” is gonna change between now and January 2005, and whatever either candidate provides is going to be hopelessly out of date when January 2005 arrives. Lots of pundits want such meaningless specifics so that they can snipe at Kerry (or Bush) when the expectedly unexpected occurs. But I’m not interested in a snipe hunt. I want to know what guides Kerry’s thinking. What will direct a Kerry administration when the unanticipated arrives (as it surely will)?
I understand that it’s “complex” — heck, I’m a patent lawyer; making simple things complex is my sacred duty. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to discern first principles. Admisttedly, it may be difficult. But Kerry’s auditioning to lead the most powerful nation on the planet in a war against shadowy enemies who defy easy categorization or defeat. He has gotta be able to play on that level.
Kerry’s failure to enunciate an alternative, whether on Iraq or on domestic policy, is the real reason why he’s down in the polls.** (But see today’s TPM, which suggests that Kerry’s may not be down by much.) The SwiftVet ads may have knocked Kerry off-message, and Bush may have gotten a modest convention bounce, but, at bottom, Kerry only has himself to blame. Kerry could’ve framed the argument at the DNC; he chose not to, and now others have framed the argument for him. It was a critical mistake.***
I’m no fan of Bush; his failure to commit sufficient resources to Iraq, and his decisions to cut taxes and allow massive increases in discretionary spending during wartime mark him as a politician, not a statesman. But I have yet no reason to prefer Kerry.
von
*I know the Swifties have you hopping mad. I’ve been on record from the start that the Swifties are not merely (mostly) wrong on the facts, but also a terrible distraction in a time of war. You can’t keep dwelling on them, however. Time to turn the boat around, and start heading upriver again — if you can manage it.
**Per Drum, foreign policy remains the central issue of the election.
***Mind you, had Kerry put his proposals forward at the convention, Bush still might be ahead. But at least then we’d know that Bush was ahead because more people agree with him on the issues. As it stands, Bush has an excellent chance of being elected because Kerry didn’t show up. Although I’m no Kerry fan, that is not a good thing for the Republic.
Some comments.
On Gephardt: of course, you’re right. The bad news is that Kerry never showed any signs of recognizing this during the Democratic primaries (although, of course he didn’t have to, since it did win for him). OTOH I don’t think Gephardt is one of Kerry’s prime surrogates and hopefully he just didn’t get the memo. It’s time for Kerry to fight.
On the “smarter” war on terror: 3 responses. First, I think you’re correct that Kerry needs to be more explicit and draw a spotlight to his explicitness.
But second, IMO it doesn’t take a detailed blueprint for me to believe he will do a better job than Bush. IMO, invading Iraq was a noteable blunder in the war on terror; as a result Islamist terror groups are having great recruiting success and their attacks worldwide have greatly increased since we went into Iraq. Further, there is a great risk that Iraq will be semi-anarchic for a long time to come, a fertile breeding ground for terrorist cells, not to mention the chance that an Islamist government will take power. And none of this was difficult to predict: to my way of thinking, just governing smartly and carefully would be a big improvement and I don’t need the details filled in (and remember, of course, that a challenger doesn’t have the intelligence and staff assets to formulate the kind of detailed plan a President can, especially in a dynamic environment).
Even if you don’t see the Iraq War as I do, I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to characterize that venture as a throw of the dice based on a not-so-well-informed decision-making process, and there also is much reason to believe that the process was overly influenced by a small group of ideologues too near the center of the government.
And I haven’t even mentioned here Bush’s baffling refusal to spend on actual homeland defenses, like all-important port security.
Third, Kerry gets ridiculed a lot for saying he will ask for international help and get it, but to tell the truth I think he is probably right. With a lot of nations in the world, it’s personal vis a vis Bush. Someone who is not Bush is going to have a much easier time diplomatically. And if we can get some Arab nations giving a significant security hand, that could make a dramatic difference in Iraq.
Other than that, Kerry may be a liberal but he is no radical. He hasn’t indicated any radical departures; I don’t think there will be any. He will assemble the Democratic foreign policy establishment–Richard Holbrooke, Anthony Zinni, Madelaine Albright–and a few new moderate faces like Wes Clark and Merrill McPeak, maybe Bob Graham. They’ll govern from the status quo with incremental, well-analyzed changes. I don’t think you will continue to see over-reliance on a particular academic view of the world that doesn’t allow intelligence to be neutrally analyzed and implemented. I don’t see any hint in Kerry’s career or in the careers of any of these people that he will start out by beating America’s swords into plowshares.
My personal feeling is that Kerry should have been hammering Bush for his incompetence* since May — on matter foreign and domestic — so that by September the RNC’s favored narrative might be taking on serious water. Given that he’s only starting to play now, however, I’m not really sure wtf Kerry can do except play really really nasty hardball, and I’m not sure he’s got it in him… or that the media tilt would let him.**
* Perceived, if you’re a Republican; real, if you’re not 😉
** I’m not talking about media bias qua “liberal/conservative media bias”, just that the media’s current predisposition towards both candidates will take a significant amount of time to overturn, time that Kerry desperately lacks.
A few points. First, to reiterate something Trickster said: I don’t think I have to know all that much about a person to believe that he would do a better job in Iraq than Bush has done so far. Leaving aside questions about whether the war was a mistake or not, the sheer level of incompetence that this administration has displayed is, to me, mindboggling. I mean, I never had much confidence in George W. Bush, but it never occurred to me that he would go into Iraq without a plan for what to do when Hussein lost power. And if you read the stories about the process behind that — the calculated decision not just to ignore the State Department’s extensive planning, but actually to bar their experts from attending DoD planning meetings, for instance — it’s hard for me to escape three conclusions. First, the people at DoD, who apparently believed that we would be welcomed as liberators, install Chalabi, and then things would be fine — were incomprehensibly bad. How hard is it, for instance, to recognize that you need to have a backup plan in case your assumptions are incorrect? Second, a lot of this seems to me to reflect the ongoing war between State and Defense. This is a feud that any decent manager would have settled before going into Iraq, but that George Bush has not dealt with to this day. Finally, whatever the problems at DoD, Bush himself should have asked about contingency planning, and should have been willing to postpone the invasion until we actually had some clue what we were going to do after Hussein left power. These are basic, basic management mistakes which any remotely competent manager simply would not make. (I think people sometimes don’t adequately consider what it means that every time George Bush had management power before he became President, he failed, except for Texas which has one of the weakest Governors on earth, and where moreover he was taken under the wing of his Lt. Governor, who seems to have known what he was doing.) — Bottom line: it would take some affirmative display of serious incompetence for me to even entertain the idea that Kerry would do a worse job than Bush.
Second, I completely agree with you on the uselessness of saying what exactly Kerry would do right now. He has stated a certain number of principles that are (I assume) at a higher level of generality than you’re looking for: getting more partners in Iraq, increasing the number of troops in the army to provide more flexibility and to end (what I think of as) the abuse of the reserve and national guard; and so forth. But while I agree with you that he should say more about his middle level approach, I have some sympathy with his predicament.
For one thing, mid-level options vanish almost as quickly as tactics. But for another, I’m genuinely unsure about what we should do now. I mean: I opposed the war to begin with, but once we went in, I was absolutely and wholeheartedly against any sort of premature exit, since it seemed to me that we had a responsibility to leave Iraq in reasonably decent shape once we had gone in. However, in the past few months I have been wondering whether there is any really good option left open to us, or whether we have screwed things up so badly that it is now irreparable. I have absolutely no instinctive attraction to this thought. And I haven’t actually concluded that it’s right. I just think that our options are, by this point, generally not very good. We have given up on significant chunks of country; we have managed to alienate most Iraqis, including of all people the Shi’a, we are unwelcome almost everywhere, and therefore our soldiers have to be very cautious and defensive, which makes it more likely that they will (totally understandably) do things that will worsen our relations with ordinary Iraqis, and so forth. In the process, lots of the best options have disappeared.
This leaves me with two thoughts. First, given a choice between leaving things in the hands of the person who got us into this mess and someone else, I am overwhelmingly in favor of giving it to someone else. (See 1 above.) Second, I think that the one thing in Kerry’s favor is that he is not Bush, and thus might possibly be able to do things that Bush cannot now do, no matter how hard he tries. Most obviously, he might be able to get more allies in. (This will of course be hard, the situation in Iraq being what it is, but I don’t think it would be impossible. As far as I can tell from travels, having friends and relations in Europe, etc., it is very hard to overstate how completely appalled most of the rest of the world is by Bush — and it’s Bush personally, not the US generally; but also how very much Europeans in particular want this period of animosity to be over. But it won’t be as long as Bush is in office.) But there are other things. For instance, it always seemed to me a total disaster for the Bush administration to give the impression that there was something like a list of countries that we’d get to after we had finished with Iraq, including Iran and Syria. As best I could tell, this gave those countries every incentive to do whatever they could to bog us down in Iraq. (Note: I am not saying that I think they would have been sweet little angels without this; only that we did not need to give them an extra reason to try to make things worse.) It is too obvious that there’s a significant faction in the Bush administration that still favors going into those countries, or would if we had the resources, for Bush to credibly try to reassure them that we do not plan an invasion in the near future. It would be easier for Kerry.
What a complete and total mess.
Oh, apropos of von’s remark that Kerry needs to tell us “what he will do”, the following comment at Kevin Drum’s blog is one of the funniest things I’ve read all week:
I’ll have to admit that I don’t pay close attention to politics, but after hearing Gerorge Bush speak at the Republican National Convention, I am convinced that he will do much better than that idiot he’s trying to replace.
In re my last point, apparently Time has a press release that says:
I caught a bit of FNS — every time Gep wanted to talk about anything other than VN, Wallace kept coming back to it. (Causing me to switch off).
Reminded me of Cohen’s op ed in yesterdy’s Post. People have ben knocking Kerry for months about the vagueness of his program:* I think if you look back, you’ll find that the “restore honor to the WH” campaign wasn’t any more specific. When a candidate gives much in the way of details, he’s assailed as boring, a wonk of some kind. Fact is, you can get as much detail from the K campaign as from any other.
K coudn’t hammer the Miserable Failue line at the DNC, because the opponents and press were ready to pounce on any sign of “anger.”
* A RW loon claimed to me 3 months ago that JFK’s sole ascertainable platform was that people who like catsup [sic] should vote for him.
They never f***ing learn.
No, I am not saying that we might not need to go to war with Iran or North Korea. It’s entirely possible. They’ve helped make it true, but it’s entirely possible.
But they are utterly BLIND to threats from non-state actors and threats that the military cannot deal with. Blind. They were blind to it the day they took office, blind to it after 9/11, blind to it after Iraq turned out to have no WMD, blind to it as the death toll has grown and the situation over there has gone worse, as blind to it today as the day they took office. They STILL care more about missile defense than nonproliferation.
It is going to help get Americans killed if they get another term. Well, it’s already done that in Iraq. But it will do that here too.
Hey von, if Bush is incompetent and Kerry is a cipher when it comes to the war, doesn’t the contempt for the Constitution that Bush has shown tip the balance? Did you ever even respond to hilzoy’s post on that? Or perhaps the massive deficits that will only get worse as long as the GOP controls all three branches of government?
As for what K will do: there’s a real problem. He can’t make a bunch of bold promises, to which he will be held in the first 100 days, year, or whatever, when he is fairly sure that he won’t get both Houses, and maybe not even one.
What he WON’T do is imporant enough to me. But no one should pretend that K announcing some kind of bold agenda is anything but a trap, to be sprung every day from now to 2008.
As to what will really happen: He can try to find the middle ground on each of the major contentious domestic issues of the day, winning over half the Reps and losing 30% of the Dems, and it will be a great triumph for the Republic. Not exactly the way to get those Dems to the barricades, though.
marguerite: von did respond to my Constitution post. I remember because I was nervous when I posted it, thinking: gee, I’m not a lawyer; maybe there’s some arcane reading of Eigentrager according to which “inherent in the President’s Commander in Chief powers” really means “something we would never, ever think of doing”, and “indefinite imprisonment without charges” really means “cuddly teddy bear”, and everyone memorizes this in law school and but since I never went to law school I had it all wrong. So I was relieved that von seemed to think it was OK.
von,
You really need good polling resources on a continuous basis to properly identify Sen. Kerry’s position on anything substantive. Then, if you identify with the position taken by a substantive plurality on any specific issue you can vote for him with confidence. You must, however, retain the flexibility of a gold medal gymnast in order to follow the nuanced presentation of Kerry’s position at any particular moment because a fluctuation in polling data will result in an interpretative dance presentaion by Kerry that some will find hard to follow.
“What are Kerry’s principles?”
What would ever lead you to believe that he had any?
RDB
I read that comment by Indepundit. With respect, it seems that the speech bears little relationship to the actual facts on the ground – as seems usual with the Bush administration.
1. We will fight for freedom. We reject moral relativism.
Need I remind anyone of all the various counter-indications of this? Our friendly relationships with Saudi Arabia, China, the various “stans” outside of Russa, and of course, Pakistan. As another example, happily willing to support a military coup in Venezuela. (yes, Chavez is not a good guy – but supporting a military coup??). The point is, like everything with this administration, this is a scripted speech that bears little relationship to reality.
2. The friends of our enemies are also our enemies.
the answer above to number 1, also is the answer for this.
3. We reserve the right to hit our enemies before they strike us.
Yes, and this has worked out SO WELL in Iraq, hasn’t it? Kerry, and every other president, would ALSO believe in striking enemies before they strike us. This WAS NOT what happened in Iraq. Again, the misleading relationship to reality, in which was an application of a “preventative” war, and not a pre-emptive one. The incompetency of the WMD fiasco, and of the occupation, speak for themselves. (With success like this, who needs enemies).
4. We will not negotiate with those who continue to support terrorism.
Good. Kerry has said the same thing. Next?
I know next to nothing about political strategy, so can someone please explain to me why Ahmed Chalabi isn’t George W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” by now? Why hasn’t the Kerry campaign, or a sympathetic 527 or PAC, played a continuous loop of Bush giving a shout out to this wanted criminal and likely Iranian spy, as he sat right behind the First Lady, along with a rundown of the bad intelligence Chalabi spoonfed Bush, to say nothing of the crimes of which he stands accused (and convicted, in at least one instance)? This man is the ultimate testament to Bush’s lack of good judgment. Why isn’t that notion being jackhammered into voters’ skulls?
Gromit: one of the annoying things about Presidential elections, for me, is that ads are forever writing themselves in my head. Here’s one now:
Voiceover: In the summer of 2001, Richard Clarke tried to warn George Bush that a terrorist attack might be imminent. (Clip of Clarke saying ‘We were running around with our hair on fire’; fade to Aug. 6 PDB headlined ‘Al Qaeda determined to strike in US’.)
But George Bush thought he knew better. That’s why he spent the month of August on vacation. (Clip of Bush firing up a chainsaw.)
Before we invaded Iraq, General Anthony Zinni and others warned George Bush that we needed a much larger force to secure the peace in Iraq. (Clip of Zinni testifying.)
But George Bush thought he knew better. (Clip of Wolfowitz testifying.) General Zinni lost his job, and now, more than a year after George Bush told us that our mission was accomplished (guess which clip here?), we are losing more soldiers almost every day. (Clip of ghastliness in Iraq.)
The CIA warned George Bush that Ahmed Chalabi was untrustworthy. But George Bush thought he knew better. He decided to count on Chalabi, a convicted felon, to run Iraq. (Picture of Chalabi sitting next to Laura Bush.) Now it turns out that Chalabi wasn’t just a fraud; he was passing our government secrets to Iran. (Clip, if one exists, of Chalabi being led away in chains.)
Paul O’Neill tried to warn George Bush that his tax cuts for the rich were fiscally irresponsible. (Clip of O’Neill).
But George Bush thought he knew better. He fired O’Neill, and stuck with his tax cuts. Now we have the largest deficits in history, and George Bush hasn’t created a single net new job since he took office. (Clip of something.)
Now George Bush wants us to give him another four more years in office. But this time Americans know better.
Or something.
All the folks bemoaning Kerry’s “lack of policy” remind me of the character in The Rose Tattoo who is always praying for “a sign from the Virgin”, while all around her, pictures are falling off walls, water is turning into wine, etc.
Kerry’s Website has a reasonable description of his position on Iraq. Now where is the equivalent from the Bush campaign? Only thing I can find on Bush’s Website is a declaration to the effect that “we will hunt down Bad Guys and kill them before they kill us”, which is a heck of a lot less specific than the Kerry stuff. (Warning — Bush site may crash non- Microsoft Web browsers.)
Now, as to whose policy is better, I’ll have to reserve judgement until I see something about the Bush policy. Presumably, it will be a variation of the current policy, which seems to be “have the Army drive around a lot, and if somebody sets off a bomb, shoot at them”.
There’s a reason that Gephardt wasn’t Kerry’s pick for VP.
Lightning’s correct; Kerry’s positions are there if you choose to look at them.
All of this ‘Kerry hasn’t told us what he’d do’ meme is just that–a meme. Essentially, what’s being bemoaned is the fact Kerry doesn’t have a few buzzword slogans about ‘evil-doers’ and ‘terr-ah-ists’ and folks ‘hating us because of our freedoms.’
Sorry, folks; complex problems often require complex solutions. And the world’s full of nuance and can’t be neatly divided into ‘with us or against us.’
Frankly, if you’re honest, Bush hasn’t told us what he’d do beyond a few shopworn slogans. We also have the benefit of seeing how well or poorly Bush did on his 2000 campaign promises.
Lightning’s correct; Kerry’s positions are there if you choose to look at them.
Yes? The effective strategy he’s devised for addressing terrorism can be found…where? Link, please.
I’m doubtful that the “Kerry isn’t any less specific than Bush is” is going to have much traction.
Sheesh, Slarti, learn to use a Web browser. Kerry on terrorism. As to whether it’s “an effictive policy”, well, we don’t know until we’ve tried. Bush’s policy, from his Website, seems to be limited to “Kill Bad Guys.”
As to “traction”, well, of course not. You and all the other Republican shills will keep repeating Bush’s talking points until the cows come home, as part of Bush’s fact- free campaign.
I’m no fan of Bush; his failure to commit sufficient resources to Iraq, and his decisions to cut taxes and allow massive increases in discretionary spending during wartime mark him as a politician, not a statesman. But I have yet no reason to prefer Kerry.
So what’s your rule here, von? Bushs hapless performance is irrelevant unless Kerry can convince you he’s the reincarnation of King Solomon? You admit that Bush has mismanaged Iraq and seriously damaged our national finances. Yet you have “no reason to prefer Kerry.”
Just what does Bush have to do before you conclude that Kerry simply couldn’t be worse?
“I don’t think there will be any. He will assemble the Democratic foreign policy establishment–Richard Holbrooke, Anthony Zinni, Madelaine Albright…”
And if any normal political action could strike more fear in my heart about our future on the war on terrorism I can’t imagine what it would be. Albright especially shouldn’t be allowed near foreign policy in ever ever again. She combines all of the worst Democratic tendencies in foreign policy with none of the redeeming traits.
You and all the other Republican shills will keep repeating Bush’s talking points until the cows come home, as part of Bush’s fact- free campaign.
I’m a Republican shill? Wow. I’ve made the big time.
Kerry’s policy seems to be pretty much exactly what we’ve already been doing. From his speeches, I thought he had some more effective strategy in mind.
Albright especially shouldn’t be allowed near foreign policy in ever ever again. She combines all of the worst Democratic tendencies in foreign policy with none of the redeeming traits.
Chuckle. Given the fact this appointed administration consigned the State Department to a status somewhat less meaningful than DoD’s dirigible program, you’ll have to excuse my skeptism as to your comment. After all, this admininstration not only refused State Dept. counsel leading into the war against Iraq and its aftermath–they actually barred the State Dept. from participating in the planning for both–leading to the disastrous situation we enjoy today.
From his speeches, I thought he had some more effective strategy in mind.
Well, “competency” is an essential characteristic of effectiveness…
Well, “competency” is an essential characteristic of effectiveness…
I agree completely. I wonder why Kerry’s not focusing on his competency in the arena of government?
Given the fact this appointed administration
That horse is not only dead, the skeleton’s falling apart.
Slarti’s not a Republican shill any more than I’m a Democratic one. Come on, that’s not useful.
Von, here’s another concrete reason to prefer Kerry:
That is enough, all by itself, to prefer John Kerry to George W. Bush.
*I find this claim very hard to believe. The author of the article is quite credible–the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine–so I suspect it’s sloppy phrasing.
Well, “competency” is an essential characteristic of effectiveness…
Well, to be fair, Anarch, the Bush administration did have a plan for post-Saddam Iraq. It was called “hope.”
They “hoped” Iraqis would greet us as liberators. And they “hoped” Democracy would flower in Iraq like kudzu and spread relentlessly throughout the Middle East. And they “hoped” oil revenues would more than make up the costs of being unable to secure a meaningful coalition to support our efforts.
In a way, they are following the model of our faith-based missile defense program.
Slartibartfast — I’m glad you’re OK. Lightning: “you and all the other Republican shills” is an insult directed against people on this board. If you actually had in mind the literal meaning — which would imply that they are knowingly acting as shills, the way the accomplice in a rigged shell game does — it’s completely out of line. Even if you only meant that they are mindlessly repeating Republican talking points, it’s not OK at all. The people here deserve our respect.
That said, I would be fascinated to hear what, exactly, Sebastian has against Madeleine Albright. I thought she was rather good on Kosovo myself, given the opposition she had to contend with.
Slartibartfast — I’m glad you’re OK.
Thanks, hilzoy. People on all sides of us fared much worse. We lucked out, I guess. Thanks also for the setting-right. It’s important to see how things could devolve to a trivial swapping of accusations, without the rules requiring mutual respect.
Hilzoy: Wait a sec. The literal meaning of “shill” is to act as a spokesperson or a promoter. Yes, one can act a ‘shill’ in a rigged game or scam–but one could act as a ‘shill’ for legitimate enterprises or causes.
Lighting’s comment WRT Slartibartifast wasn’t pejorative unless you’re interpreting the GOP as an illegitimate or criminal enterprise.
I agree completely. I wonder why Kerry’s not focusing on his competency in the arena of government?
No idea. I’ve maintained from the start that Kerry should have been hammering the competency factor the moment he’d (de facto) won the nomination. Yet another reason why I think the Kerry campaign needs to remove its collective head from its collective ass, and pronto.
JadeGold, and lightning: My dictionaries disagree amongst themselves. The one I used first (i.e., before my last post) is a quick online thing that accesses WordNet, and has: “shill:”
n : a decoy who acts as an enthusiastic customer in order to
stimulate the participation of others
v : act as a shill; “The shill bid for the expensive carpet
during the auction in order to drive the price up”
The OED, curiously, doesn’t have it at all. Merriam-Webster has, for the noun: “1 : one who acts as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler); also : one who makes a sales pitch”
And for the verb: “1 : to act as a shill
2 : to act as a spokesperson or promoter
Based on these entries, and on my unwillingness to look at anymore, I pronounce as follows: the main meaning seems to be what I said it was. However, JadeGold is right to point out that ‘shill’ can also be used to mean ‘spokesperson’. The policy of respect which led to my post now compels me to assume that lightning meant the second, in which case it’s OK. I should undoubtedly have erred on the side of caution and consulted more than one dictionary at the outset. Had lightning wished to do likewise, s/he might have used a word less open to reasonable misconstruction.
God, I love faux pomposity 🙂
“That said, I would be fascinated to hear what, exactly, Sebastian has against Madeleine Albright. I thought she was rather good on Kosovo myself, given the opposition she had to contend with.”
I’m about to go play volleyball outside so I can’t throw out an essay, but in short
North Korea–while Jimmy Carter was responsible for negotiating the abysmal Agreed Framework, Albright was responsible for repeatedly downplaying North Korean violations so that the payments could keep flowing to Kim Jong Il . She was also the key participant in the odious October 2000 meetings with Kim Jong Il where she said some horrificly naive things to the press about North Korea and their love of the dear leader.
Rwanda.
Kosovo was made much worse because of her initial containment/appeasement approach, see Dayton Accords. But she did a serviceable job after that.
Her Middle East approach was, all roads go through Israel, no other country needs to make improvements until the Israel/Palestinian conflict is resolved. That worked rather well. See Camp David disaster sparking the renewed intifada. (I’m not blaming her for Arafat’s existance. I’m blaming her for being one of the long line who trusted him.)
And thats just the short version. If I research my old files there is more.
“Spokesperson”
Guess I’ve been promoted from DeathBeast. Really, though, the idea that I’m some sort of promoter for the RNC is laughable.
See Camp David disaster sparking the renewed intifada.
Really now. You know, I’m just not going to comment on that, but as far as all Middle Eastern roads leading to and through the Israeli/Palestinian problem, I think that was and has been true, and may still be true unless the new Iraq problem has eclipsed it. The spread of the use of the terrorism tool throughout the Arab world arose directly from that conflict, as did much of the generalized Arab resentment of the West. Solve that problem and we will have eased tensions in the Middle East a great deal. I think there’s only 1 President in the last 40 years who seems to have disagreed with that proposition: the one in office.
As for N. Korea, it looks as if we are very very slowly wending our way back to the point where the matter stood when Albright left office, only we are most likely several N. Korean nuclear devices later. I certainily don’t see any alternative. The dirty little secret is that we are not in a position of power vis a vis N. Korea.
Rwanda was awful; lay some blame on the President’s back; he has admitmted grave errors. Albright certainly deserves some blame as well. Also remember: Darfur.
Finally, although I’m fairly certain Kerry would make use of Albright’s expertise and experience somehow, she’s likely to be one of the least influential, at least publicly, of the group I named, just because she has been attacked so vociferously by the opposition.
Like Trickster, I cannot imagine in what sense Madeleine Albright was responsible for the intifada. I always thought that was attributable to Palestinian and Israeli idiocy, not to our efforts to find some way to solve the problem. Nor can I see in what possible world the Clinton policy towards North Korea is worse than our present one. As for Rwanda, I seem to recall that while no one was really on the right side of that one, she was closer than a lot of other people, and tried unsuccessfully to get our position to be less grotesque than it actually was. Not good enough by a long shot, she was closer to right than a lot of other people. And afterwards she concluded that she had been wrong, whereas last I heard (e.g., as of the last campaign; it hasn’t come up much since, as far as I know), Bush was still saying that he wouldn’t have gone into Rwanda.
My only problem with Madeleine Albreit, really, is her inconsistency. An NPR interview had her maintaining that Clinton was justified in attacking an aspirin factory in the Sudan, even though no evidence of WMD production was ever produced (before or after the attack), and in the next breath denouncing Bush’s invasion of Iraq as unjustified. If it had been TV, could we have seen the blush? Saying they were both wrong is arguable, but saying Clinton was justified and Bush not is indicative of dynamic goalpost positioning.
Where to start on Sebastain’s laundry list?
North Korea? I’m not sure anyone promoting Bush really wants to claim this appointed administration’s policy on North Korea has been anything but an unmitigated disaster. WRT the Agreed Framework, Colin Powell and Bush have both endorsed it. Unfortunately, a pattern throughout Bush’s life has been a failure to follow through and North Korea has once more begun gearing up its nuclear weapons capability.
Rwanda. President Clinton has noted this to be the biggest failure of his administration. Contrast it to the ongoing problem in Darfor; do you believe Bush will express a similar regret?
Your mischaracterization of the Clinton/Middle East policy as ‘blame Israel first’ is simply delusional and not worthy of you.
Samantha Power has written that Albright pushed for the administration to do more in Rwanda and was ordered by Warren Christopher to say what she did at the UN or lose her job, more or less.
There is a story that Bush has read one of Power’s accounts on Rwanda and written “not on my watch!” in the margins. That’s nice, but I don’t put much stock in it. We always say never again, and we always seems to let it happen again.
WRT the “aspirin factory” strike vs the Iraq invasion. I don’t know enough, and I doubt any of us do, to say whether the “aspirin factory” strike was justified.
But assuming arguendo that strike was justified, it’s extremely easy to contrast it to Iraq and prefer the strike to the invasion. After all, we’re talking about a surgical strike vs a war of conquest that left us holding the bag on a semi-permanent basis. To argue somewhat crassly, I’m sure the families of the 7 Marines that died in Fallujah today understand very well the difference between a surgical strike and an invasion followed by an occupation. In fact, although at a lower level on the scale of importance, every U.S. taxpayer should be able to see that difference.
After all, we’re talking about a surgical strike
Yes. A surgical strike into a sovereign nation, which was under no cease-fire agreement, and against which Congress has, as far as I can tell, authorized no execution of war. Again, this isn’t about what is really so, but how Albreit claimed one was justified and the other, unjustified. I’m wondering what her standards were.
I don’t know enough, and I doubt any of us do, to say whether the “aspirin factory” strike was justified.
This is exculpatory? If it were Bush having done it, it’d be damning. Hell, it WAS damning…where are the WMDs?, is the cry.
I don’t really want to go back and check on the strike in the Sudan. However, if memory serves it was in response to the al Qaeda attacks on our embassies in Africa, and the plant was thought to be a plant where chemical weapons precursors were being manufactured, and in which Osama bin Laden had invested. We also struck al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan at the same time, without having a declaration of war against them. Personally, I think that both strikes were justified, given what we knew at the time, although given subsequent questions about whether our intelligence about the Sudan plant was accurate, I wish we had had better information.
To boil it down, slart, my point is that the missile strike was an over-and-done affair, while the invasion of Iraq opened up a world of ongoing hurt, and not by any means just for us. And that’s not just a valid, but a necessary consideration in evaluating whether or not one should support either of those actions.
At least in your latest post, you seem to be confusing “justified” with “legal”. I have little doubt that both actions were “illegal” under international law. “Justified” raises entirely different questions and certainly can’t be evaluated without looking at consequences.
WRT the Sudanese ‘Aspirin Factory’ meme, a couple articles:
NYTimes
Global Security
Slate
The bottomline is as described by Hilzoy; that is, it may or may not have been an innocent ‘aspirin factory.’ However, to claim there was no evidence anywhere supporting a more sinister purpose is simply false.
However, to claim there was no evidence anywhere supporting a more sinister purpose is simply false.
Sufficient evidence would be nice.
Sufficient evidence would be nice.
Sounds as if the Dynamic Goalpost Positionerâ„¢ has been engaged.
Prompted by a remark above, I will share with you all the two unusably long bumper stickers I thought up this week:
1. They said the road to Jerusalem leads through Baghdad. Sure it does, if you live in Teheran!
2. Bush’s only tool is a sword, so every problem looks to him like a Gordian knot.
The effective strategy he’s devised for addressing terrorism can be found…where?
To be fair, Bush hasn’t exactly put forth an effective plan himself.
Is it really unreasonable to posit that the standard of evidence for a full-scale invasion should be just a bit higher than that for bombing a single target?
Is it really unreasonable to posit that the standard of evidence for a full-scale invasion should be just a bit higher than that for bombing a single target?
Dunno. Do you think that sending cruise missiles to a target in a country that we haven’t had direct conflict with sends a bit of a negative message to the international community? What if we’d cruise-missiled France?
Sounds as if the Dynamic Goalpost Positionerâ„¢ has been engaged.
Nah, just trying to see if common standards are in place. So far, there don’t seem to be. IOW, we’ve found far less evidence of WMD in Sudan than we’ve found in Iraq. If there’s dynamics repositioning here, it’s an equal-and-opposite thing.
To be fair, Bush hasn’t exactly put forth an effective plan himself.
Other than having executed one, I’m not sure what you’re looking for.
Bush’s only tool is a sword, so every problem looks to him like a Gordian knot.
Bush has a sword? Who knew?
Other than having executed one, I’m not sure what you’re looking for.
An effective plan? Let’s see; nearly a thousand dead Americans, another 7000 wounded, and for what? Right now, the most likely scenario is that Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish factions will fail to cohere under the transitional govt. and Iraq will fall into a civil war.
Was the “effective plan” really to have the region fall into a state of chaos as we feed more American lives (and US dollars) into the chasm?
Sheesh, if this is the effective plan, I’d hate to see what the failed plan might have brought.
Right now, the most likely scenario is that Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish factions will fail to cohere under the transitional govt. and Iraq will fall into a civil war.
Really? What’s the likelihood of that, versus other outcomes?
nearly a thousand dead Americans
Let’s see…roughly 800 combat deaths, toward the end of decapitating a state which we (we, as in John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and…oh yes, George Bush and his administration) collectively thought needed to be taken down. Sounds like a pretty effective prosecution to me. Got any historical examples in mind to top that?
Re Albright on Sudan vs. Iraq: Any decision has to weigh risk and reward; so (as Chuchundra suggested), since the potential downside of the missile strike was much lower than that of the Iraq invasion, the amount and reliability of the evidence wouldn’t have to meet nearly as high a threshold to be considered actionable.
I don’t have any idea what intelligence they were actually working with, so I wouldn’t go so far as to defend the opinion, but I don’t think it’s evidence of her partisanship in and of itself.
von,
Well, there you go. Thirty or so comments by Kerry supporters that lay out with clarity and concision the principles that he holds so dear. It’s wonderful to see the depth of loyalty he inspires and the overarching vision that he has inculcated in all who believe that the United States will be better under his wonderful leadership. Your choice is clear, how could you fail to be persuaded by such well articulated support for such a shining light.
Let’s see…roughly 800 combat deaths, toward the end of decapitating a state which we (we, as in John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and…oh yes, George Bush and his administration) collectively thought needed to be taken down. Sounds like a pretty effective prosecution to me.
Effective prosecution of a localized objective is not equivalent to effective prosecution of a more general objective, let alone of a general strategy. I don’t know anyone who criticize the execution of the military strategy of the “War” per se,* i.e. the ouster of Saddam Hussein — indeed, if you’re just talking about “decapitating the state” you’ve overestimated the casualties by roughly an order of magnitude — but then again, Bush didn’t really have anything to do with the relevant tactical planning. [Nor should he; that’s not the President’s job.] It’s the grander strategic objectives to which we’ve been alluding, and that is where Bush’s “effectiveness” remains grievously open to question.
* Yes, I mean nowadays. I’m well aware that far too many people were despairing during the campaign.
“The bottomline is as described by Hilzoy; that is, it may or may not have been an innocent ‘aspirin factory.’ However, to claim there was no evidence anywhere supporting a more sinister purpose is simply false.”
I submit. You win. If Clinton asserts WMD capability in a country with no history of such and 6 years later there is no evidence to back it up we can ascribe no sinister purpose. If Bush asserts, in accordance with the understanding of the intelligence communities of the world, the same about a country with a long history of actually using illegal chemical weapons and a long history of obstructing inspectors he is clearly lying, lying, lying.
Unfrickingbelievable.
Sebastian: I feel your pain.
You might wish to review the articles I linked to upthread. I believe they furnish a pretty good thumbnail sketch of the issues and controversies concerning the strike on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
However, to pretend the Sudan attack and the events leading to our occupation of Iraq are identical is, as you say, unfrickingbelievable. There were UN inspectors in Iraq verifying Iraq wasn’t awash in WMD–as your administration claimed. Further, your administration told us that not only was Iraq awash in WMD but we knew where they were. Guess what, Sebastian? They lied.
Your administration also wasn’t telling the truth when it strongly implied a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. OTOH, we did have evidence bin Laden had a relationship with the the Sudanese plant.
If Bush asserts, in accordance with the understanding of the intelligence communities of the world, the same about a country with a long history of actually using illegal chemical weapons and a long history of obstructing inspectors he is clearly lying, lying, lying.
To continue with Jadegold’s point, see my earlier posts about first-order versus second-order reasoning in re Saddam’s possession of WMDs.
[PS, Slarti, if you’re reading this: you’re right, my last post in that thread was excessively abrasive. My apologies.]
PS, Slarti, if you’re reading this: you’re right, my last post in that thread was excessively abrasive. My apologies.
Apology accepted, Captain Needa.
🙂
*chokegurglewheeze*
*thud*
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