The Bush campaign has been focusing on an argument about expanding international support in Iraq that sounds kind of logical at first blush, but falls apart upon further inspection. Bush laid out this line of reasoning last week and Cheney follow up on the same point last night.
In the last debate, for example, Bush said:
“[Kerry] says the cornerstone of his plan to succeed in Iraq is to call upon nations to serve. So what’s the message going to be: ‘Please join us in Iraq. We’re a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time?'”
A few days later, Bush rephrased this same attack: “I can imagine him walking into the leaders of the world saying, ‘We need your help, but Iraq is a mistake.'”
Cheney was on the same page last night, saying, “[Y]ou demean the sacrifice of our allies when you say it’s the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, and oh, by the way, send troops. Makes no sense at all.”
I understand the argument and it sounds vaguely compelling at first. Why would a country (or most of a continent, for that matter) that opposed the invasion to begin with want to send troops for a war that the U.S. president believes is a mistake? If the war shouldn’t have happened in the first place, the argument goes, it would be the kind of thing countries would stay away from, not help out with.
But thinking this through demonstrates the fallacy of the Bush campaign’s logic.
First, John Kerry did a fine job in explaining in the debate exactly the kind of message he’d take to the international community.
“[W]hat we need now is a president who understands how to bring these other countries together to recognize their stakes in this. They do have stakes in it. They’ve always had stakes in it. The Arab countries have a stake in not having a civil war. The European countries have a stake in not having total disorder on their doorstep.
“But this president hasn’t even held the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together and get them to invest in those states. In fact, he’s done the opposite. He pushed them away.”
That’s true. Bush thinks Kerry’s approach would fail, but Kerry realizes that Bush’s approach has already failed.
But on an even more logical level, no matter who’s president in 2005, we’ll have two basic choices in reaching out for broader international military support in Iraq:
1. Tell them that “freedom is on the march,” we’re making great progress, and the constant attacks from insurgents and rising casualty rates aren’t as bad as they seem. By the way, we’d love it if everyone would send troops, but don’t get any nutty ideas about touching our oil, I mean, the Iraqis’ oil.
2. Or tell them that Iraq may have been a mistake when the invasion is launched, but the country is falling apart at the seams now and it’s time to set things right. A broad and legitimate international coalition can help stabilize the country, which would benefit everyone. In turn, reconstruction contracts will be open to all coalition partners, not just hand-picked U.S. allies.
Bush and Cheney are convinced the second option “makes no sense,” but isn’t the first one certain to fail? The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber summarized the competing approaches nicely:
Pretty much every potential ally in the world thinks Iraq was a mistake. As long as that’s the case, don’t you stand a greater chance of winning them over by acknowledging this rather than treating them like idiots? If I’m France or Russia, I’m going to be much more receptive to a pitch that says, “Look, we know we screwed up, but we need your help so Iraq doesn’t become an even bigger problem than it already is.” The alternative pitch — “Hey, everything’s going great. We’d still do it the same way if we had it to do all over again. Oh, and by the way, would you mind kicking in a few thousand troops?” — doesn’t strike me as so compelling.
Bush’s more of the same is an obvious disaster. Kerry’s pitch may or may not work with a skeptical world that has grown distrustful of the U.S. over the last four years, but it sure sounds a lot more persuasive that the status quo.