The big new discussion in the Dem presidential primary is the debate over whether Howard Dean was wrong for saying that the capture of Saddam Hussein does not make the U.S. safer. Leading the charge challenging Dean’s remark is Joe Lieberman, though Dick Gephardt is voicing similar concerns.
I think there’s a legitimate Dean criticism here, but most of his rivals appear to be missing it. Badly.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday, Lieberman said, “I don’t see how anybody could say we’re not safer with Saddam Hussein in prison than loose.” This follows a similar attack from Monday, in which Lieberman said Dean had “climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer.”
Gephardt went after Dean on the comment as well, saying Dean’s remark was “disingenuous.” Gephardt added, “To say that [Hussein] doesn’t present an ongoing threat by being able to pass help to terrorists is just wrongheaded, just further evidence of the difficulty Howard would face in any contest with George Bush.”
I hate to agree with Dean two days in a row, but I think they’re both missing the point here: most Democrats, especially those getting ready to vote in early primaries (and caucuses) agree with Dean’s analysis. For most of us, Hussein’s arrest was a very positive development, but it doesn’t change our underlying concerns. If Hussein wasn’t a threat before the war, and he wasn’t a threat during the war, why would we be safer as a result of his arrest?
Indeed, for most Dems, the point of their opposition to the war in Iraq has been premised on the belief that Saddam Hussein was never a threat to the United States. Looking at this with hindsight, Hussein didn’t have biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, and had no apparent plans to take hostile action against anyone in the Middle East. Before the war, he was contained and unlikely to take any provocative actions as long as the U.N. weapons inspectors were combing the country.
The serious terrorist threats, the ones that make us feel less safe, are posed by al Queda and bin Laden. While I was excited to see Hussein get captured over the weekend, I certainly didn’t feel any safer as a result. Lieberman and Gephardt aren’t doing themselves any favors by making this argument a central feature of their Dean criticism.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Hussein was a harmless paper tiger. That has clearly never been the case. This was a vicious dictator who’s started wars against his neighbors, killed thousands of innocents, gassed the Kurds, and tortured Iraqi enemies. Saddam Hussein was, for lack of a better word, a monster.
But Dean’s specific remark was about whether or not we, in the U.S., are safer as a result of this arrest. To be sure, the brutalized Iraqis who may have ended up in some of Hussein’s notorious mass graves are certainly safer, and, with any luck at all, our troops in Iraq may be safer, but are those of us on U.S. soil safer? I don’t think so.
That said, I do believe that Dean has opened himself up to a new round of criticism; it’s just that Lieberman and Gephardt appear to missing it.
Dean, under fire from his rivals, is sticking to his speech from Monday. Indeed, as the Washington Post reported today, Dean has found that so many people agree with his controversial statement that he’s actually added the remark to his stump speech. Campaigning in Arizona yesterday, Dean told a group of seniors, “I hope very much [Saddam’s arrest] will begin to diminish attacks on our troops, but I do not think it will make America’s homeland safer.”
Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, added, “I don’t think it’s lost on anybody that if Saddam hadn’t been caught over the weekend, many of [the candidates] would be in their antiwar stance and trying to score votes that way. We’ve been consistent.”
And therein lies the problem. Dean hasn’t been consistent.
While he may be impressing crowds now by having the guts to say that we’re not safer as a result of Hussein’s capture, Dean was offering the opposite message before the war.
On the September 29, 2002, episode of Face the Nation, for example, Dean seemed to wholeheartedly believe that Saddam Hussein was a threat that needed to be dealt with.
While questioning the immediacy of the danger Hussein posed, Dean nevertheless said, “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies.”
If Dean was right, and Hussein was a definite threat, then his arrest would make us safer. But Dean is now taking the opposite tack.
The Kerry campaign seems to appreciate that this is Dean’s vulnerability. While Lieberman and Gephardt are running around telling Dems that we’re safer now that Hussein is in custody, Kerry, to his credit, knows better and has catered his criticisms accordingly.
As Kerry said in Iowa yesterday, “When America needed leadership on Iraq, Howard Dean was all over the lot, with a lot of slogans and a lot less solutions.”
Exactly. I hope Kerry keeps this up.
And it’s also worth noting, by the way, that Wesley Clark also benefits from these squabbles. Dean gets hammered for making another controversial remark about foreign policy, while Lieberman and Gephardt attack Dean for saying something that most Dems agree with. Clark, meanwhile, appears “above the fray,” as he returns from his successful visit to The Hague, where he reminded everyone of his experience in bringing a genocidal maniac to justice and helping stabilize a war-torn nation.