On the dominating issue of Iraq, it is possible for reasonable people to be simultaneously to the right of President Bush and to the left of John Kerry
By George F. Will
Newsweek
Sept. 27 issue - This grotesque presidential campaign, which every day subtracts from the nation's understanding of its deepening dilemmas, cannot end soon enough, or well. Concerning the issue that eclipses all others—the wars in Iraq and against Islamic terrorists—reasonable people can be simultaneously to the right of President Bush and to the left of John Kerry.
To the right of Bush: More forces may be needed—and more forceful employment of them. In the truncated conquest of Fallujah, U.S. commanders ignored Napoleon's axiom: "If you start to take Vienna—take Vienna." Flinching may have been prudent, although finishing the conquest might not have added much to the odium surrounding the U.S. presence in Iraq. And not crushing the insurgency in Fallujah may have accelerated, even formalized, the disintegration of Iraq. How do the administration's nation-builders think elections are going to be held in this maelstrom?
To the left of Kerry: Recently he said that even if he had known then what we know now, he would have voted to authorize the war. That is, even knowing that Saddam Hussein was not yet nearly the danger that intelligence guesses said he was, and even experiencing the occupation's rapidly multiplying horrors, Kerry says: Make me president and I will more deftly implement essentially the same policy.
Who believes there are now fewer terrorists in the world than there were three years ago? The administration should be judged as it wants to be judged, by its performance regarding the issue it says should decide the election—national security. However, the opposition party is presenting an appallingly flaccid opposition. Teddy Roosevelt's description of William Howard Taft fits Kerry: "feebly well-meaning."
He needs to resuscitate his campaign by making himself an interesting alternative to Bush. However, he seems incapable of mounting what the nation needs—a root-and-branch critique of the stunningly anticonservative idea animating the administration's policy. The idea, a tenet of neoconservatism, is that all nations are more or less ready for democracy. So nation-building should be a piece of cake—never mind the winding, arduous, uphill hike the West took from Runnymede and Magna Charta in 1215 to Philadelphia in 1787.
GEORGE F. WILL
Current Column Archives
Last week in The Washington Post, Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative, wrote a column that illustrates why neoconservatives alarm almost everyone who isn't one—and especially dismay real conservatives. He was responding to Vladimir Putin's quick-step march into authoritarianism—Bonapartism with a semi-civilian face. Putin is scrapping direct popular election of Russia's governors, and will have Parliament elected on the basis of slates compiled by parties he largely controls. This is not a change of direction; it is an acceleration of a process already far advanced. It is adding sinews to Putin's existing semi-dictatorship, which is buttressed by his control of television.
Kagan thinks Putin's Russia should be Bush's next reclamation project, starting right now. Kagan does not exactly mean regime change; instead, he favors stern tutoring in democratic niceties. You might think America has its hands full democratizing Iraq. But Kagan says Russia is today's test of "how committed [Bush] really is to the cause of democracy around the world."
Kagan says "much depends on what Bush does and says in the coming days" and "a great deal is riding on whether President Bush can muster the will to denounce" Putin. Much? A great deal? Please. Will Putin retreat under the heat of a Bush scowl? Kagan says that unless Bush, while insisting on democracy in the Middle East, also denounces Putin, Bush will seem guilty of a "glaring" double standard. But that is the problem with neoconservative naivete that seeks to apply a single standard to all the nations of this naughty world.
"A dictatorial Russia," says Kagan, "is at least as dangerous to U.S. interests as a dictatorial Iraq." Oh? Then perhaps regime change is required in Russia after all.
Kagan knows that "we will pay a price" if Bush denounces Putin, and there may be "a loss of Russian cooperation" if Bush "goes further, as he should, and begins taking tangible actions in the economic and political spheres to express U.S. disapproval." This is neoconservative monomania.
There is no more urgent U.S. priority than Russian cooperation in securing Soviet-era fissile material that could fuel nuclear terrorism. Should we sacrifice that just to express impotent disapproval?
Warning that Russia might slide into tyranny, Kagan asks: "Is that the legacy President Bush wants to leave behind?" Think about that. Russia's fate will be Bush's "legacy"? Kagan, a highly intelligent and very representative neoconservative, evidently believes it is in Bush's power to determine Russia's fate.
Lurking there is the idea behind foreign-policy overreaching—the anticonservative delusion that political will can control the world. And Kerry has nothing to say about it.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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