The Democratic convention and the Iraq War

I was impressed by the Wednesday evening speeches of General John Shalikashvili, the retired former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards.

Shalikashvili identified himself as "an old soldier and a new Democrat."  His views represent not just his personal perspective but the outlook of many, especially in the Army, that not only was the Iraq War poorly prepared and militarily unnecessary.  But also the view that the Rumsfled vision of "military transformation" relying on the promise of high-tech weapons to minimize the number of soldiers needed.

But there are no magic weapons as yet that can accomplish what needs to be done with a large-scale and long-term occupation of a country like Iraq.  As Shalikashvili put it:

[John Kerry] knows that to be truly safe at home we must significantly strengthen the protection of our homeland and that we must not again allow ourselves to be distracted from the relentless pursuit of these terrorists. At this moment thousands upon thousands of our brave troops are deployed in Afghanistan and in Iraq in a protracted and bloody struggle. Still countless other soldiers remain deployed around the world upholding the cause of freedom and representing what is best about America.

John Kerry was the first to warn that these worldwide military deployments are dangerously overstretching our military and particularly our Army. That unless we appreciably increase the size of the Army and restructure it to give it new capabilities needed in the new war against terrorism, we are in real danger of returning to the days of a hollow Army.

And, John Kerry has made it crystal clear that no matter how strong we might be, success in the war on terror or in bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan and to Iraq will likely elude us unless we bring friends and allies to our side both for the fight and for the long, hard work of reconstruction. We must do this not because we need anyone's approval when we act to protect our security but because we are more effective when friends and allies stand by our side as together we share the burden and the risks. There is no doubt that capable allies and strong alliances are today more important to our security than ever before. ...

I know about the horror of war and thus join with others like John Kerry in believing that we must go to war only when all other efforts to resolve the threat to us have been exhausted. And only then, when going to war becomes absolutely necessary, then to go with full resolve and to use force decisively. But we should never go to war without a comprehensive plan for how to secure the peace once military victory has been won.

As Bob Somerby (the Daily Howler) frequently points out, the press develops what he calls "scripts" about figures in the news.  By that he means a general assumption, a conventional wisdom, which they then use to interpret all his actions and words in a consistent - and comfortable (for the press) - framework.

The preferred press "script" for Edwards seems to be something along the lines of: Edwards is good at creating a sense of empathy with an audience but since he's a "trial lawyer" (a favorite GOP bogeyman), he risks coming across as contrived.

For those of us who actually worry about what a political leader says and what he's likely to do in office, his TV persona is not the most critical thing to examine.  (Although I will make a style statement about his 22-year-old daughter Kate.  What's with the retro-70s look?  Was she trying to ape the Stepford Wives or something?  The woman's a graduate of Princeton.  But she looked like an advertisement for Agnes Scott "finishing school.")

Edwards did a good job of articulating his feeling of solidarity with the American troops at war, which is important for national candidates.  And he addressed some of the issues challenges the country faces in the Iraq War:

But today, our great United States military is stretched thin. We've got more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, almost 20,000 in Afghanistan. And I visited the men and women there, and we're praying as they try to give that country hope.

Like all of those brave men and women, John put his life on the line for our country. He knows that when authority is given to a president, much is expected in return.

That's why we will strengthen and modernize our military. We will double our Special Forces. We will invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best prepared in the world. This will make our military stronger. It'll make sure that we can defeat any enemy in this new world.

But we can't do this alone. We have got to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us.

It is how we won the Cold War. It is how we won two World Wars. And it is how we will build a stable Iraq.

With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors, like Syria and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction.

We can do this for the Iraqi people. We can do it for our own soldiers. And we will get this done right.

A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it a stable Iraq, a real chance for freedom and peace in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel.

And John and I will bring the world together...

The impulse is a good one: try to find a real international solution for Iraq.  Bring in allies to provide some of the troops that are needed but we can't provide.  Get support on debt forgiveness.

But most of it is wishful thinking.  And here is where both Edwards and Kerry are limited by their own foolish vote to give Bush a blank check for war in Iraq in October 2002.  Bush's loss of credibility over Iraq has been spectacular.  He made up the reasons for war.  The terrible horrible threat of Iraqi WMDs that he beat the American public over the head with for months was fake.  Non-existent.

And yet Edwards didn't attack him on that point.  Shalikashvili did a much better job of articulating the dismay of most people at the idea of starting a war of choice using the excuse of a looming threat that didn't exist.

The Vice Presidential nominee istraditionally expected to be the "attack dog" of the campaign.  As moving as Edwards' vision of opportunity and hope is, he didn't attack very hard last night.  And on Iraq, the issue on which Bush's credibility and image as a national leader is most vulnerable right now, Edwards worded his speech in a way to allow those who wanted to draw the impression that he and Kerry would press for escalating the Iraq War.

This is a risky game.  It seems bizarre to committed partisans that any voters might perceive Kerry as more belligerent on Iraq than Bush.  But I noticed on the PBS commentary last night, Republican loyalist David Brooks commented that Kerry seems to be positioning to "run to the right" of Bush on Iraq.  That's BigPunditspeak for "sounding more warlike" than Bush.

In reality, there is no realistic prospect at the moment that events in Iraq can be made to appear peaceful and optimistic in the next two months, outside the Fox-News-and-Oxycontin alternative universe where its always been a cakewalk there.  But if Kerry and Edwards give swing voters the impression that they would escalate the war in Iraq, while Bush and Cheney give reassuring-sounding sound bites about how successful we are there, they could lose the election on that issue.

And if they don't use the opportunity to attack Bush's credibility over the issue, they would foregoing the use of one of their strongest cards.  I haven't heard all the speeches.  But I haven't heard a single mention at the Democratic convention of the torture issue.  Have our politics become so morally degenerate that even the Democratic politicians are afraid they might alienate some potential voter by saying a word against the sick, sadistic, criminal acts of torture that have been committed in the gulag at the direction of Rumsfeld and probably Bush himself?

More specifically for Edwards, will he challenge Dick Cheney head-on during the campaign and during the Vice Presidential debate about his lies on WMDs and Iraq/al-Qaeda ties, and about his office's role in the torture scandal and the Valerie Plame leak?  About his support of the super-sleazy Ahmed Chalabi and the leak of highly sensitive signals intelligence to Iran?

Edwards was impressive on Wednesday evening.  But if Kerry and Edwards want to win the election, they will have to be much more aggressive in going after Bush that Edwards was in his convention speech.