Did Kerry flip-flop on the Iraq War? Rodger A. Payne attempts to defend Kerry with the novel tactic of actually examining his speech before the war vote in the Senate.
Does Payne succeed in this effort? In a word, no. If speeches were anything to go on, Bush would be the greatest force for democracy in the entire world. Kerry's speech is a nice effort, and it places all kinds of sensible qualification and restrictions on his support for Bush. But Kerry had to have known that Bush would disregard those qualifications and restrictions, and he had to have known that by then it would be too late for Kerry to do anything about it. A vote for Bush at the time really was a vote allowing Bush to wage war if he deemed fit, and by that point, it was clear Bush deemed fit.
Kerry said in October 2002:
When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein.Yada yada yada. Except that Bush was obviously lying about the practical effect of the resolution. There is simply no way that Bush would have built up that many troops in the middle of the dessert and then sent them home. There was going to be a war, come hell or high water. Kerry's speech was an agonized response to the agonizing position which Bush deliberately placed Congress (and the country) in: Either support Bush (thereby essentially granting him the right to wage war) or support a humiliating climbdown before the entire world. That's a tough spot to be in, but let's be clear that no amount of fine speechifying changes the fact that Kerry knowingly chose the first horn of the dilemma.As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice."
Now, I agree with Payne that Kerry didn't want a war, and would have preferred to let inspectors continue their job. But that wasn't what the vote was really about, and Kerry either knew it or he doesn't deserve to be president.
Posted by Chris at July 28, 2004 02:07 PMAnd why exactly is there no Kerry quote from around about March 20, 2003 to the following effect:
"Holy shit, no! You idiot Bush...I thought you were just bluffing Saddam...you were serious? Christ almighty, you damn fool. If I'd known this...that vote...damn it..." etc. etc.
No, Kerry's decision was "political" as Americans seem to call everything related to electioneering.
Posted by: DC at July 28, 2004 05:35 PMChris,
I don't know about Kerry, but my own hope in the fall of 2002 was that 1441 plus the troop build-up would convince Saddam that he ought to "come clean" -- i.e. capitulate -- as quickly and if need be as abjectly as possible. If he'd done that, convincingly owning up to his past programs and strategic reliance on WMDs and renouncing all future designs on them, his WMD bluff would have been unsustainable and he'd have lost whatever regional and domestic advantage he thought it gained him (thus perhaps hastening the way to an internal coup).
But whatever else you say of it, you can't say that Saddam's response to 1441 was that sort of capitulation. It was a strategic giving of whatever ground he thought he had to give while retaining whatever advantage he thought he could retain. Kerry would not have been unreasonable to have hoped for capitulation, and it was not unreasonable to be disappointed when Saddam's response fell far short of that.
If Saddam had capitulated -- in ways one can easily imagine -- it's unlikely that Bush would have retained the support of Blair for invasion. And perhaps that would have dissuaded Bush. It's even possible that Bush would have been dissuaded without Blair's prodding.
Before you blast me as a warmonger, do consider whether Saddam's conduct from November 2002 to February 2003 was really that of the head of a regime that posed no stragegic threat when viewed in the light of its previous behavior.
This is NOT to argue that war was justified. It is only to argue (a) that war was not inevitable and (b) that it was therefore not unreasonable for Kerry to vote for the resolution.
Posted by: Ted H. at July 29, 2004 11:13 AM