Iraq War: John Kerry's New York University speech (2)

John Kerry's speech at New York University (09/20/04) covered both strategic views and specific criticism of the Bush administration disastrous policy on the Iraq War.  In my previous post, I discussed those.

Kerry's proposals

In this one, I'm focusing on Kerry proposals on the current situation in Iraq.  From his speech, they include the following:

* First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone.  It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support. (my emphasis)

* Second, the President must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

* Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.

* Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.

Context more important than specifics

Kerry has understandably shied away from very specific proposals, and he will be criticized for doing so with these, as well.  But there are very good reasons for that.  One is political: he doesn't need to get specific to capitalize on the more-than-justifiable discontent most Americans feel over the Iraq War.

There is a practical consideration that he underscores in this speech.  The situation in Iraq is fluid and fast-moving, and the Bush administration's bad choices have reduced the number of positive options at a stunning pace.

And there is what we might call a presidential consideration.  If Kerry is elected, when he takes office in January he will need and want maximum flexibility in coming up with a solution to the Iraq War.  The Republicans will be bombarding him with criticism essentially from the minute he's elected and blaming every problem that occures in that war on him right away.  So the fewer specifics he gives, the less constrained his policy will be.  Although, in practice, the situation is moving so quickly in Iraq that most non-Republicans will be able to understand that he may have to confront a very different state of affairs inIraq in January than what exists in September.

Kerry focuses on that reality in this speech:

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands.  But we cannot throw up our hands.  We cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America’s security for years to come.

All across this country people ask me what we should do now.  Every step of the way, from the time I first spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out specific recommendations about how we should and should not proceed.  But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way.  This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago, in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the President was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day, this President makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq – harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago.  It is time to recognize what is – and what is not – happening in Iraq today.  And we must act with urgency.  ... (my emphasis)

I was particularly struck by the fact that Kerry called that wretched Donald Rumsfeld on his lies about the Iraqi security forces in discussing that issue:

Last February, [Defense] Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform.  Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent.  Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces.

But guess what?  Neither number bears any relationship to the truth.  For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained, by the administration’s own minimal standards.  And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program.  Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can’t stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order? (my emphasis)

Has the United States ever had a Defense Secretary as irresponsible as Donald Rumsfeld?  It's just unbelievable that a hostile, sneering, arrogant guy who brushes off the Geneva Convetions as just "some convention" and admits to having specifically authorized criminal, sadistic torture is stillin office as Secretary of Defense.

The point of Kerry's proposals is not, of course, that Bush will actually act on them.  In fact, the point is to emphasize that he will not.  He's calling Bush to account for the failures of policy in the Iraq War.

Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq.  It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority … 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical … 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.This [his action program on the Iraq War] is what has to be done.  This is what I would do as President today.  But we cannot afford to wait until January.  President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track.  Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America. ...

On May 1 of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now infamous banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”  He declared to the American people: “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”  In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come.  The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective – a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve. 

In Iraq, this administration’s record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment of historic proportions. 

With the minor exceptions that I noted (minor at least in the context of this speech), Kerry has stated the dilemma the United States faces in the Iraq War extremely well.

Prediction in politics is always tricky.  But I think we can say with confidence that we will never hear George W. Bush give a speech this candid about the situation in Iraq.