Face the Iraq Fiasco, Senator Former war hero and protester John Kerry...

has to stop angling for position and confront Bush directly on the war.

by Robert Scheer

Commentary Column Los Angeles Times — April 27, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer27apr27,1,4639564.column

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake?"

That was the crucial question Vietnam combat veteran
John Kerry put to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee 33 years ago, and it is the question that
should be at the center of his presidential campaign.

Today, however, Kerry seems unable to admit that the
war he voted to authorize in Iraq has been such a
disaster, arguing only that we must "stay the course."
Why, when that was the tragic advice from the best and
brightest in the Lyndon Johnson administration?

In proposing a long-overdue appeal to the United
Nations and NATO to make them real partners in the
rebirth of Iraq and take - in his words - the "Made in
America" label off what has become a very unpopular
occupation, Kerry gets some things right that the
president has gotten so wrong. Unfortunately, however,
the Democrats’ heir apparent is still taking far too
much solace in the conventional wisdom, which brought
us the sorrows of the Vietnam War.

"Americans differ about whether and how we should have
gone to war," Kerry said in a national radio address
April 17. "But it would be unthinkable now for us to
retreat in disarray and leave behind a society deep in
strife and dominated by radicals. All Americans are
united in backing our troops and meeting our commitment
to help the people of Iraq build a country that is
stable, peaceful, tolerant and free."

Wasn’t that our stated goal in Vietnam? The repetition
of history here is tragic. Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who wrote a searing acknowledgment of the folly
of the Vietnam War in his own autobiography, deceived
the U.N. last year in support of another ill-fated
military adventure in the so-called developing world.
We now see a similarly intelligent war veteran, Kerry,
seeking to send more troops to a country that he must
know, from his own war experience, will not stay
pacified.

In the birthplace of civilization, we have again run
aground on the rocky shoals of nationalism, this time
augmented by a religious fervor that increases the
danger. As with Vietnam, escalation is not the answer.
But an orderly and timely withdrawal is - under U.N.
supervision and with the firm goal of leaving Iraq to
the Iraqis.

Beyond postulating "tactical" solutions in Iraq, like
sending our troops more body armor, Kerry needs to take
a huge step and acknowledge that his own support of
this war was a terrible mistake.

Sure, he was lied to repeatedly by a president who told
us a year ago under a "Mission Accomplished" banner
that "we have defeated an ally of Al Qaeda," when he
knew we had done no such thing. But Kerry had all the
resources to know what many inside and outside the
United States’ own family of intelligence agencies were
saying long before last year’s invasion: Iraq no longer
had a nuclear weapons program, had no ties to 9/11 and
would be a nightmare to occupy.

Although Kerry claims "all Americans" would agree it is
"unthinkable" to leave Iraq any time soon, he fails to
acknowledge that having more than 100,000 of American
troops hunkered down in the Middle East is not a force
for stability in the region but rather a lightning rod
for violence and chaos.

He is even urging the government to send more U.S.
troops to Iraq and keep them there until that country,
which has little or no history of democracy, is
"stable, peaceful, tolerant and free."

Such rhetoric may sound good on the stump, but it
utterly fails to acknowledge that we have no clue as to
how long that would take or how many Americans and
Iraqis would die in the experiment. In the Vietnam War,
millions died before our hubris was exhausted.

In the end, if Kerry is not to become the next Al Gore
– triangulating safe positions just this side of a
Republican who is probably the most irresponsible
American politician in a century - he must challenge
President Bush’s entire vision, not just his tactics.
What Bush is doing in the name of fighting terrorism
has nothing to do with making us safer and everything
to do with dressing up the grim goals of empire as a
grand (and all-too-familiar) experiment in bringing
enlightenment to so-called backward people at gunpoint.

To have a real choice in this election, we need to hear
the voice of that young Navy hero who once warned us
that murderous meddling in other countries’ affairs
will never win the hearts and minds of the people.

If Kerry fails to truly confront Bush and is elected,
he may find himself answering his own awful question:
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake?"

[Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times and
is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us
About Iraq" (Seven Stories Press/Akashic Books, 2003).]