Bob Kerrey — still backwards on Iraq

May 22, 2007

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, who’s always been something of a Liebermanite when it comes to foreign policy, published a fairly long op-ed for the Wall Street Journal today, defending the Bush administration’s approach to the war in Iraq. Most of it is pretty boilerplate — Saddam Hussein was a “threat” after 9/11, Iraq is the central front in the war on terror — but a few of Kerrey’s less-obvious points deserve special attention.

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified — though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

I hear this quite a bit. If we withdraw, bin Laden and other monsters will get a morale boost, as if they drove us from the battlefield. I think this is largely nonsense — terrorists’ propaganda efforts will continue no matter what we do — but the argument badly misses the big picture.

If we’re concerned about al Qaeda’s perspective, we have a choice — giving the terrorists a hollow “psychological victory” by leaving or giving them an actual victory by staying. Perhaps Kerrey missed it, but we were reminded just a few days ago that al Qaeda is using the war in Iraq to raise money, recruit terrorists, train terrorists, and grow stronger than they were before we invaded.

It’s frustrating that it’s necessary to keep repeating reality, but by staying the course, as Kerrey recommends, we’re helping al Qaeda achieve its goals. That should be far more of a concern than whether a sensible U.S. policy is a “psychological victory” for Osama bin Laden.

This need not be complicated. Al Qaeda suffers if we withdraw from Iraq. Our departure hastens the terrorists’ demise in Iraq because a) we’ll have taken away their recruiting tool; and b) Iraqis themselves will drive al Qaeda out quickly and ruthlessly.

What’s more, TP notes in a terrific post — nice researching, Faiz — that Kerrey has been writing mistaken op-eds for the WSJ for quite a while, and his credibility suffers accordingly.

On September 13, 2002, just as Congress was debating whether to approve a resolution providing President Bush the authority to use force against Iraq, former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

“The real choice is between sustaining a military effort designed to contain Saddam Hussein and a military effort designed to replace him. In my mind the case for the second choice is overwhelming…. Regime change is the only way we can safely reduce our military commitment to the region.” […]

In December 2003, an undeterred Kerrey claimed that he had been vindicated and Iraq war critics would ultimately be proven wrong. “Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort,” he wrote.

And now Kerrey believes the way to defeat our enemies is to give them more of what they want. You’ll forgive my skepticism.

May 22, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Kerry should explain those psychological victories to the woman holding her dead child. Actually there is no need of the Bushies to worry. The killing will continue after we leave. Too late to put that genie back in the bottle.

It’s obvious to me that the Taliban and al Queda play from the same public relations playbook the GOP uses. Namely, whatever your opponent does or doesn’t do, whatever YOU do or do not do, whatever happens or doesn’t happen to you, it’s good for you because (fill in excuse here)

al Queda will rejoice if we leave Iraq. They’ll boast and brag if we stay in Iraq. If we manage to capture a million terrorists, it’s great for al Queda, because it will allow them to restaff their ranks with younger and hungrier followers. If we take out the Number 3 Man in al Queda du hour, they will herald him as a martyr and call his death a glrorious day in the movement…

This is what al Queda does. This is what the GOP does. I refuse to believe the upper echelons of the GOP are filled with people so stupid, they don’t realize spin when they see it. After all, the GOP is the team that made spin a religion, so no surprise the most radically devout religions will adopt it and make it their own.

Actually, regarding his earlier comments, Kerrey had a lot of company. I know a number of senior Air Force members who were getting very concerned about the no-fly-zone patrols, and the incessant drain on funds which that was running.

Now, in 20-20 hindsight, was that a heck of a lot cheaper (and pretty much non-life-cost)? Yeah. But, Kerrey certainly was not alone in his thinking.

It’s too bad for Kerrey he couldn’t be a plaster saint with a posthumous Medal of Honor, so he wouldn’t keep proving what everyone who ever served in the military knows: most of their fellow soldiers were idiots.

CB:
“I hear this quite a bit. If we withdraw, bin Laden and other monsters will get a morale boost, as if they drove us from the battlefield.”

You can get driven out now… or you can get driven out later.
It’$ your choice…

But have no doubts about it:
You are GOING to get driven out.

I’ve been saying this for over 4 years:

Christian tanks in Baghdad are no different than Moslem tanks in Richmond, VA.

It is lose-lose!
You either kill everyone or you get driven out.

Since we are not going to kill everyone… we are GOING TO GET DRIVEN OUT.

It is inevitable.

Anybody that doesn’t see this is a JACKASS.

Bush gave al Qaeda a victory the day he invaded Iraq. Getting the U.S. bogged down in the mideast was exactly what bin Laden wanted. All the false bravado of the neocons allowed them to be suckered.

Let’s see…what’s more important? A “psychological” victory for Al Queda? Or the actual death and dismemberment of more U.S. soldiers, many of whom are in their teens and early twenties and think they’re immortal?

That’s a real dilemma. Wouldn’t want to hand Al Queda a psychological victory. Nah. Let’s be brave and resolute and send more of those American kids to their deaths. That proves that we, sitting safely behind our desks, are real men.

One problem is that those who predict bad things if we leave Iraq are largely correct.

However, supporters of remaining have provided no evidence that remaining longer will do any good.

We will have problems if we leave this year. We will have problems if we leave Iraq in two years, five years, or twenty years. The difference will be that there will be more lives lost, more money wasted, and more hatred of America the longer we stay.

Kerrey wrote something else that was particularly infuriating. He wrote that Iraq could have complied with the UN resolutions quite easily. Well….that’s false. Ridiculously false. It’s so false, that I feel compelled to send Kerrey a nasty-gram about this; not because he’s a Dem and should be a spokesman for the loyal opposition, but because he should be smarter than making that astounding claim.

One need only have a little familiarity with technical audits to know that you follow the paper trail wherever it goes; makes sense right? The problem with Iraq’s compliance is that they had poor inventory control, poor battlefield inventory control (since much of this stuff was made and consumed in the Iran-Iraq war), poor record keeping in their production facilities, poor documentation of their destruction process, etc., etc. Even the manifest produced by Iraq in the post-Gulf War which formed the basis for almost the entire Bush justification for war was woefully inadequate – ‘garbage in’ as it were. Could anyone expect that there would be ‘garbage out’ with that as a starting point. That anyone would think that those inaccurate documents would form the basis for an invasion 10-15 years after their production just speaks additional volumes about the distortion foisted on the American people by the Bush team.

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