{"id":10878,"date":"2007-05-22T14:08:01","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T18:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10878.html"},"modified":"2007-05-22T14:08:01","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T18:08:01","slug":"bob-kerrey-still-backwards-on-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bob-kerrey-still-backwards-on-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Kerrey — still backwards on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> victory by staying. Perhaps Kerrey missed it, but we were reminded<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

It’s frustrating that it’s necessary to keep repeating reality, but by staying the course, as Kerrey recommends, we’re helping<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

This need not be complicated. Al Qaeda suffers if we withdraw from Iraq. Our departure hastens the terrorists’ demise<\/a> in Iraq because a) we’ll have taken away their recruiting tool; and b) Iraqis themselves will drive al Qaeda out quickly and ruthlessly.
\n
\nWhat’s more, TP notes<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“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.” […]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now Kerrey believes the way to defeat our enemies is to give them more of what they want. You’ll forgive my skepticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}