After reviewing Howard Dean’s remarks on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, I’m finding myself increasingly confused about the governor’s opposition to war in Iraq. Then again, maybe it’s Dean who’s confused.
Bob Schieffer was commenting on how Dean had “set himself apart” from other top tier candidates by opposing Bush’s plans for war. Dean said, “That’s not exactly so,” and explained that he opposes the war only because he doesn’t see “any cause for unilateral and preemptive intervention in Iraq. Iraq is not of immediate threat to the United States.”
OK, got it. Iraq isn’t an immediate threat, so we shouldn’t launch a “unilateral and preemptive” attack. That’s a perfectly defensible position on the controversy.
But consider those remarks against what he told Salon.com just two weeks ago.
“Saddam must be disarmed, but with a multilateral force under the auspices of the United Nations,” Dean said. “If the U.N. in the end chooses not to enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm, and if he doesn’t, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable, choice.”
That, too, is a perfectly reasonable position for the governor to take. There’s only two significant problems.
First, these two analyses of war in Iraq are substantively poles apart. On CBS, Dean said Iraq wasn’t a threat so the U.S. shouldn’t launch a unilateral preemptive strike. With Salon, Dean said Iraq must disarm and that unilateral action may ultimately be unavoidable. Sorry doc, these positions just don’t match.
Second, Dean’s clarification to Salon seems eerily familiar. Let’s delve into Dean’s remarks to Salon closely: Iraq must be disarmed. The United Nations should get involved and its resolutions should be enforced. If the U.N. refuses to act, and Saddam Hussein refuses to disarm, the U.S. can and should force Iraqi disarmament through unilateral military action. Why does this position sound familiar? Because it’s the exact same position taken by the Bush administration.
With this in mind, why is Dean running as the anti-war candidate? And for that matter, why are anti-war activists looking up to Dean as their standard bearer? Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for his part, stakes out his opposition to war in Iraq in a far clearer way: he believes attacking Saddam is “immoral and illegal.” I don’t really agree with Kucinich’s conclusion, and I have trouble imagining why Kucinich is even running for president, but at least I understand his unambiguous position on Iraq.
Dean, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to have thought through his foreign policy positions. He’s already flip-flopped on North Korea, and suddenly, his position on war with Iraq is sounding a lot like Bush’s. All the while, he’s chastising other candidates for trying to have it “both ways” on foreign policy.
Carpetbagger knows Dean is getting tutorials on foreign affairs from some advisors in Washington, but I’m beginning to think the lessons aren’t going well.