The Incredible Shrinking Plan
By John Cole Posted in Elections — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Tacitus has written at great length about the real Kerry plan in Iraq, and has come to the conclusion that what Kerry really intends to do is to cut and run.
Tacitus makes a persuasive case, and Kerry to date has publicly offered little more than a Nixonian deal with the devil. "Trust me," he in effect says. "I will release my plan after I have been elected."
Read on:
This did not impress the editors at USA Today, who stated today:
Thirty-six years ago, Republican candidate Richard Nixon made a similar pitch for ending the Vietnam War: He slammed the Democrats as incompetent, called on allies to bear more of the burden and suggested that he had a plan to end the war that he couldn't disclose until he was in office.
Four years later, he still had no answer.
Iraq isn't Vietnam, and Kerry's plan isn't quite as opaque as Nixon's, but the historical echoes are strong enough to suggest that if Kerry has a credible proposal for Iraq, he needs to fill in the blanks.
As Tacitus stated earlier, Kerry's only real stated plan is to 'internationalize' the War, whatever that means. In case you are unconvinced by Tacitus's piece, you need only use google to check for Kerry's public proclamations:
John Kerry and John Edwards will make the creation of a stable and secure environment in Iraq our immediate priority in order to lay the foundations for sustainable democracy. They will:
Persuade NATO to Make the Security of Iraq one of its Global Missions and to deploy a significant portion of the force needed to secure and win the peace in Iraq. NATO participation will in turn open the door to greater international involvement from non-NATO countries. - Kerry/Edwards Website
Kerry said he has laid out several steps that should be taken to increase international involvement in Iraq, including sitting down and talking "in a very personal way" with leaders of other countries, sharing decision-making and reconstruction there and getting together the United Nations, NATO or another "group of international players" to recognize its "global responsibility." He said he would get a U.N. resolution authorizing action in Iraq.
"Statesmanship and leadership are the art of persuading people who might otherwise have reservations of their interests," he said. - Fox News, 16 May 2004
First, he said, the other members of the United Nations Security Council should be brought in "to share the political and military responsibilities and burdens of Iraq with the United States."
The coalition should endorse the transition plan of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Kerry said, and a high commissioner should be appointed. Finally, he added, NATO must contribute forces and "take on an organizing role." - Military.Com, 1 May, 2004
Kerry beat the drum on multilateralism. "American soldiers are bearing the huge majority, the lion's share of the risk in Iraq. It doesn't have to be that way, it never had to be that way," he said. It was a stance he repeated Friday.
"The immediate goal is to internationalize the transformation of Iraq, to get more foreign forces on the ground to share the risk and reduce the burden of our own forces," he said. "That is the only way to succeed in the mission while ending the sense of an American occupation." - Washington Times, 3 May 2004
Kerry's message is clear- he wants to 'internationalize' the war in Iraq, a statement so vapid and vacuous that were the roles reversed and it was George Bush running to unseat John Kerry uttering these inanities, the chattering classes would have another round of 'Bush is stupid' jokes circulating the DNC by mid-morning.
The roles, however, are not reversed, and the press has continuously failed to ask the hard questions, such as:
"As President, Mr. Kerry, why do you think you will be able to place more international troops on he ground?"
"Have any countries promised to provide more support if you are elected?"
"What countries have troops that are available for deployment?"
"Are those troops modernized and professional enough to work effectively besides British, Australian, and American forces?"
If he were to be asked those questions, the ruse would immediately be over, and Mr. Kerry would immediately be exposed as the fraud that he is. In fact, honest responses to those questions would be so devestating that the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the DNC would immediately have to threaten to sue news stations to keep them from airing his response.
Perhaps part of Kerry's difficulty in understanding the problem with our international allies is one of naivete. It may be that he still believes that French and German opposition to intervention in Iraq is based on principled opposition to any type of armed conflict (which may be the case for many Germans) and an honest desire to see dispute resolution handled through international organizations.
If that is the case, then Kerry has completely missed the Franco/German power struggles within NATO, the European Union, and French blackmail of Turkey regarding entrance to the EU, nor the French bullying of smaller Eastern European states. He has also missed the French motivation to maintain the largesse offered in the form of lucrative oil contracts in Iraq. He must have missed the system of kickbacks to corrupt European officials in the UN run 'Oil for Food' scandal.
Since there seems to be a lot that Kerry has missed, it is no surprise that he has failed to notice that beyond the Coalition the Bush administration has put together, there simply is no international will to become involved in Iraq beyond what has already been contributed. Germany and France, our recalcitrant allies, have stated over and over again that they will not provide any troops- in fact, it took months of negotiation to even persuade France to allow a NATO training mission in Iraq to move forward.
If Kerry is not completely ignorant, he is, to be blunt, lying:
"I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them," Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said in a typical comment.
Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don't want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.
Allies say they are ready to consider further financial aid and other help for the fragile new Iraqi government. But some officials overseas already are fretting about Kerry's talk of burden-shifting.
"Some Europeans are rather concerned that Mr. Kerry might have expectations for relief [from abroad] that are going to be hard to meet," said one senior European diplomat in a statement echoed in several capitals.
In an interview with The Times last week, Kerry said that by building up international support, it would be a "reasonable goal" to replace most U.S. troops in Iraq with foreign forces within his first term. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops stationed there, or 88% of a total international force of about 160,000.
Not only is there no international will, there are simply no forces to deploy in the first place:
Some key countries have already ruled out providing troops, and others are badly strained from the deployments they have already made.
The French and German governments have made clear that sending troops is out of the question. British officials have made no such categorical statement, but they have expressed concern that their troops are overstretched.
Although Japan has supplied a 550-member noncombat force as a symbol of its international commitment, analysts there see little chance the nation would agree to send more.
Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, ruled out a commitment of troops. "We are not going to send anybody there, and that's all there is to say," Denisov said.
"From the major European countries, there's simply not a lot of available troops out there, for both practical and political reasons," said Christopher Makins, president of the Atlantic Council of the United States, which supports U.S. engagement abroad.
In summary, Kerry has no plan available forpublic scrutiny, and what can be pieced together from his public statements is untenable. Why are you only reading about that here?
« Question and answer time: the Wes Clark thing. — Comments (50) | A Thousand SF Bush-Haters Headed For NYC — Comments (10) »
The Incredible Shrinking Plan 15 Comments (0 topical, 15 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I have to wonder what Kerry's ultimate goal is for Iraq...mainly because he is less than specific about it. I get a very European/policy wonk "the process is everything" vibe, from the way that having "a broad international coalition" appears to be the goal itself. shrug I could be wrong, but he hasn't been very good at putting forth what the goals are beyond that.
From both candidates I want to hear what would consititute victory in Iraq. What are the markers in determining success? I realize even as much as Bush has put forward, a lot of it is very generalized. But at least there is something out there to measure. With Kerry... I have no clue, and this is after a year of him campaigning for President.
The dichotomy in Iraq is between a draft and cutting and running if we want to be able to do anything else. The Sudan crisis is demonstrating how thoroughly (and unacceptably)tied down the US military currently is. Neither candidate is discussing this, because if you thought Medicare was a third rail, wait until you start talking seriously about a draft or a pullout for Iraq.
The folks who kind of trust the President to muddle through will do so no matter who is elected, and the folks who are paying attention have figured out the subtext. It's a weird way to run elections, but it seems to be working.
....if you thought Medicare was a third rail, wait until you start talking seriously about a draft or a pullout for Iraq.
Kerry's already talking about the latter. No outcry.
'Cept from us.
Not an eventual withdrawal after we've done whatever it is defines victory this week.
In brief, Kerry really does intend to do what you're defining as a pullout. Disturbing stuff, but there it is.
But that's irrelevant to my point, which is that Kerry cannot come right out and say that, just as Bush cannot come right out and say, "Look, folks, the only way we're going to pacify Iraq well enough to plant some military bases there is to institute a draft, so I'm going to have some tough decisions in the beginning of my putative next term."
Instead, Kerry throws out this idea of foreign support (as though all of the nations in the world combined could project half as much force as we have into Iraq (Okay, maybe Iran could, but that's suboptimal)), and Bush orchestrates a handover to a compliant strongman which shuts the media's coverage down. Serious political consumers come to fairly accurate conclusions, and most folks vote their pocketbooks anyway. Like I said, a weird system.
We don't need a draft. If the economy doesn't start producing we will need a tax increase to pay for both a military pay raise and more soldiers, but that isn't the same as a draft at all.
Having failed to scare the bejeezus out of every citizens with images of John Ashcroft's minions demanding access to their library cards, the left has now glommed onto the draft as the new apocalypse awaiting in a second Bush administration.
It seems like every argument on matters foreign and domestic is incomplete without "...yeah, and Bush is going to start a draft, too, man" appearing somewhere.
There's a bit more to Kerry's plan than just (further) internationalizing the effort. In Our Plan for America, Kerry and Edwards write:
Our troops in Iraq have not had the clarity of mission, the equipment, and the international support they need and deserve. Our helicopter pilots have flown battlefield missions without the best available anti-missile systems. Too many of our nation's finest troops have died in attacks because thousands were deployed to Iraq without the best bulletproof vests, and there is a shortage of armored vehicles on the ground. [...] When we are in the White House, that will all change.
[...]
We should:
- Make the creation of a stable and secure environment our immediate priority in Iraq in order to lay the foundation for a sustainable democracy,
[...]
- Plan for Iraq's future by working with our allies to forgive Iraq's multi-billion dollar debt and by supporting the development of a new Iraqi constitution and the political arrangements needed to protect minority rights. We will also convene a regional conference with Iraq's neighbors to secure a pledge to respect Iraq's borders and not to interfere in its internal affairs,
- Launch a massive and accelerated training effort to build Iraqi security forces that can provide real security for the Iraqi people, including a major role for NATO.
With all the talk on internationalizing removed, admittedly it isn't much. But the situation, difficult as it is, is more about effective practical management than possessing a Grand Unified Theory of Freedom-Bringing. And I have to say that I don't give high marks to the Bush administration for the way the incursion has been run so far.
By the way, I'd be obliged if anyone can give pointers to where I can read Bush's (incredibly detailed, I'm sure) plan on what he intends to do in Iraq during the next four years. I've tried Google, but it seems he's saying just about the same thing as Kerry, minus the stuff about internationalization and acknowledging that mistakes have been made. Trawling through the results, after a while it all blurs into a vortex of buzzwords. ("Freedom", "transfer of sovereignty", "democracy", "stay the course", "freedom", "transfer of course", "stay the freedom", "freedom of freedom", "democracy the freedom", "freedom"...)
... but that basically looks like "I'm going to do all the things Bush has already started on, plus I'm going to get more countries to help".
I think I give Bush higher marks than most Redstaters on this. There have been some fairly major mistakes, but most of them were very reasonable mistakes to make. Some of them were probably not mistakes at all, and only look like mistakes because the alternatives weren't tried (and shown to have been worse).
John
There's a bit more to Kerry's plan than just (further) internationalizing the effort.
Sure, there's the sub rosa plans for headlong retreat and vapid rhetoric, too. By the bye, with the exception of the international conference to guarantee Iraq's territorial integrity -- which isn't particularly threatened by its neighbors in any case -- the substantive points you copy from the Kerry website have already been undertaken by the Bush Administration.
And I have to say that I don't give high marks to the Bush administration for the way the incursion has been run so far.
He'll look like Eisenhower in '45 if the alternative gets into power. It's one thing to mismanage a war. It's another to choose to lose it.
By the way, I'd be obliged if anyone can give pointers to where I can read Bush's (incredibly detailed, I'm sure) plan....
Your ignorance of it is, frankly, your own fault. There has been a timeline for Iraqi democratization in place for some time now. In fact, there has been for over a year. It's been revised in the course of events, of course, but it's been extant and public.
I've tried Google, but it seems he's saying just about the same thing as Kerry, minus the stuff about....
....headlong retreat.
Trawling through the results, after a while it all blurs into a vortex of buzzwords.
You can hardly blame the text for the totality of your incomprehension.
Oh, I admit that it's all my fault. I've been trying to read the news, but obviously I've missed all the hardcore policy chat. I guess I've been too busy studying what Kerry did on Christmas Eve 1968 to pay proper attention. As far as I can tell, the timeline looks something like this:
- In the next couple of months: tell the insurgents that Saddam has been captured so they'll put down their weapons.
- Like, next year, or something: hold elections.
- Forever thereafter: let freedom reign!
I can't deny that it's a good plan, but I'm just wondering whether there's more to it than that.
Curable, but patient cooperation is always problematic.
Look, folks, the only way we're going to pacify Iraq well enough to plant some military bases there is to institute a draft, so I'm going to have some tough decisions in the beginning of my putative next term.
I saw some numbers recently (on this site, perhaps?) that gave me some hope on the buildup of domestic Iraqi forces. I think the total number is now well into the six figures, and growing steadily. These are brave men who sign-up for such service, even taking into consideration their economic deprivation.
Anyway, long story short is, that, even though Uncle Sam's forces will be there for a while yet, it seems to me that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and then in the not-too-distant future, we'll be seeing more and more of the heavy lifting being handled by the Iraqis themselves.
Even if our ongoing commitments require more troops, I don't see why it's self-evident that the way to go about doing that is via a draft (as opposed to simply increasing the recruitment budget). The latter is more expensive, but yields a more professional military.
Elections in Iraq are on the way, and I don't see how they'll be prevented by the insurgents (any more than the thugs were able to prevent the handover earlier this summer).
Moreover it looks increasingly like the Iraqi government itself is running out of patience with the insurgents. My guess is they're backed by a considerable weight of public opinion -- by ordinary Iraqis, that is, who just want their country back, and to live in peace.
Now is not the time to cut and run. With a little backbone, and a continued commitment to funding the buildup of Iraqi forces, we may just pull this thing off yet...
http://www.news-journalonline.com/downloads/080804beat.gif