BUSH & KERRY ON IRAQ: BEYOND RECKLESS vs. FECKLESS



Recent presidential campaigns have demonstrated that you can count on the mainstream media for two things. The first, is that it will happily glom on to whatever substance-free issue comes its way to avoid any discussion of actual substantive issues. The second is that to the extent substance is discussed, it is transmitted through an uncritically accepted conceptual framework. Thus, once the motif of Stupid But Sincere Bush against Smart but Calculating Gore was established, anything that played against it (such as blatant lying by Bush on his tax plan) was downplayed, while anything that played to it (any repositioning on any issue no matter how slight by Gore)emphasized.
With respect to this campaign, on Iraq, the conventional wisdom is Bush is reckless while Kerry is feckless. And any inconvenient facts that may suggest either pragmatism/wobbling from Bush or resolution/rigidity from Kerry are ignored.


Kerry: Mostly Feckless


As liberal pundits have noted, Kerry's position on the war is not as inconsistent as the simplistic version of it offered in the media. Kerry saw his as vote as empowering Bush to bargain from a position of strength, and use force only after diplomacy failed. Thus, by only going through the motions diplomatic, Bush did things "the wrong way" and Kerry is not inconsistent in opposing the war that Bush actually fought.


However, consistency and coherency are two different things, and Kerry's proceduarlist critique is maddeningly vague. At no point does Kerry answer the relevant questions his position begs to be answered: how much time should the weapons inspections been given to verify the state of the Iraqi WMD production? How much abuse of the inspections process would he have tolerated before deciding to use force? Should a tightened sanctions regime have been the alternate in the event that the inspectors found no smoking guns, but did no received total cooperation from the Hussein regime? How should a president have handled differences of opinion with other nations as to these questions - especially from the French and others who were not negotiating themselves in good faith? Will Kerry ever answer these questions before November? Will he even be ASKED these questions? Highly doubtful.)


Bush: From Reckless to Feckless


Whatever problems the media has with accurately portraying Kerry's position on Iraq pales in comparison to its reporting on what the Bush administration has actually done there. Both liberal and conservative pundits alike portray the Bush administration as holding a unilateralist, idealist course throughout the whole Iraq process. Thus liberals decry Bush as reckless, ideologically radical (wedded to the vision of the Neocons), and completely unable to admit, let alone adapt to unanticipated circumstances. Conservatives portray Bush as dynamic, decisive, steadfast and morally grounded in holding the course he set out in 2002. What's fascinating is that both the standard attack and defense of Bush's Iraq policy has become so fixed, so ritualized that they pretty much ignore anything the administration has done over the past 12 months.


The reality is that since May 2003, while the Bush Administration's neocon/Wilsonian rhetoric has stayed the same, on the ground it has reversed itself in numerous areas, subordinating the goal of producing a functioning Iraqi democracy to the goal of shortening the occupation to a politically palatable level. In order to carry out this fundamentally Jacksonian policy, the Administration turned to the Hamiltonian experts at State and elsewhere to facilitate it.


The appointment of Bremer in May 2003 marked the beginning of this shift, but Bremer himself was responsible for disbanding of the Iraqi army in the name of de-Baathification. The real change came in October, with the reorganization of Iraq policy. Unilateral idealism was out, multilateral pragmatism was in, for better or worse. Opposition to U.N. involvement melted, transfer of sovereignty to a Iraqi government was pushed ahead of elections, anti-democratic militias in Falluja and Najaf were left intact to preserve short-term stability, Ahmed Chalabi went from ally to target. Were some of these new policies prudent? Perhaps. Cautious? Definitely. Reckless? Definitely not. A reckless crusader for democracy would have doubled down, sent in more troops and rode out the short-term criticism to present a better environment for Iraq's first elections. A purist, ideologue would have not handed over the government to a former Baathist strongman.

Both liberal and conservative pundits however would rather peddle the convenient myth of neocon consistency. For liberals, now enamored with realism, doing so would force them to admit that Bush has adopted much of their platform over the past year, and for them to face the consequences of what they advocated. For conservative idealists, facing Bush's last year squarely forces them to face just how far they have fallen, and the very real weaknesses of their hero. But the truth is Bush has been reckless & feckless. And Iraqis and Americans alike will be paying in the future just as much for the "solutions" offered by realist wise-men as they will for the problems created by neocon hubris.