One of the central questions in this election is simply: can John Kerry be trusted to fight the war on terror? Worrying about this is what keeps me from making the jump to supporting him. I’m a believer in the notion that we are at war, that you cannot ignore state sponsors of terrorism, and that the 1990s approach obviously failed. Bush rightly shifted our direction toward regime change rather than police work, something long overdue. But when you look ahead, it’s more difficult to see where the differences between Kerry and Bush would actually lie. Bush, after all, doesn’t deny the importance of police work or nation-building in the war (indeed, at this point, they’re the bulk of his policy). And Kerry has no option but to acquiesce in regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the future policy mix is bound to be somewhat similar. More to the point: I don’t see a huge difference between Bush’s and Kerry’s approaches to North Korea and Iran. In some respects, Kerry even seems tougher on Saudi Arabia than Bush is. In Iraq, Bush declared last Friday night that Kerry’s plan was a carbon copy of his own. Why, then, would Kerry be such a risk?
BUSH AS BAD COP: Kerry also brings some obvious advantages. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush has committed any successor to a process of lengthy and difficult nation-building. If that truly is the major task of the next few years, wouldn’t it be better to have people who have experience in nation-building and who actually believe in it (like Holbrooke), rather than people like Rummy and Cheney who clearly disdain it and keep under-funding and under-manning it? One of the advantages of being a democracy in wartime is that we can shift leaders and tactics as circumstances permit. Think of this strategy as a bad-cop-good-cop routine in a war against an elusive enemy. Bush has scared the living daylights out of our foes, removed two dictatorships and regained the initiative against Jihadism (all very, very good). But it’s in America’s interests also to show that we can reach out to moderate Muslims, placate the Europeans, and expand the anti-terror alliance. Why wouldn’t a Kerry administration be effective in that respect? As long as it is seen as a shift in tactics, rather than an exercise in appeasement, I don’t see the major downside. We’re fighting two wars: one against the terror-masters in Jihadist regimes, and another in world and Muslim opinion against the ideology of Islamo-fascism. Bush has done well in the former and not-so-well in the latter. A hammer clad in a little Kerry velvet might not be so bad a weapon in the coming four years.
KERRY AS GOOD COP: The major objection to this, of course, is that Kerry simply cannot be trusted. He won’t simply change tactics in the war; he’ll change direction. His long record of appeasing America’s enemies certainly suggests as much. And I don’t blame anyone who thinks that’s enough evidence and votes for Bush as a result. But it behooves fair-minded people also to listen to what Kerry has actually said in this campaign: that he won’t relent against terrorism. He isn’t Howard Dean. And 9/11 has changed things – even within the Democratic party. Moreover, the war on terror, if we are going to succeed in the long run, has to be a bipartisan affair. By far the most worrying legacy of the Bush years is the sense that this is a Republican war: that one party owns it and that our partisan battles will define it. Simply put: that’s bad for the country and bad for the war. Electing Kerry would force the Democrats to take responsibility for a war that is theirs’ as well. It would deny the Deaniac-Mooreish wing a perpetual chance to whine and pretend that we are not threatened, or to entertain such excrescences as the notion that president Bush is as big a threat as al Qaeda or Saddam. It would call their bluff and force the Democrats to get serious again about defending this country. Maybe I’m naive in hoping this could happen. But it is not an inappropriate hope. And it is offered in the broader belief that we can win this war – united rather than divided.
The Dish 