Kerry-Edwards Stonewall

If not murder, John F. Kerry and John Edwards have
accused President Bush of something close to criminally
negligent homicide in Iraq. "They were wrong and
soldiers died because they were wrong," Kerry said of
the Bush administration over the weekend.

This is strong language, but not unjustified. Last
week’s Senate Intelligence Committee report adds to the
pile of studies and reportage that has undermined the
key reasons Bush gave for going to war: Saddam
Hussein’s imperial designs, links between Iraq and Al
Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction and so on.

The trouble is, both Sens. Kerry and Edwards voted yes
on the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq. And now
they refuse to say whether they would have supported
the resolution if they had known what they know today.
Both say they can’t be bothered with "hypothetical
questions."

But whether it is a hypothetical question depends on
how you phrase it. Do they regret these votes? Were
their votes a mistake? These are not hypothetical
questions. And they are questions the Democratic
candidates for president and vice president cannot duck
if they wish to attack Bush on Iraq in such morally
charged language.

After all, the issue raised by the Senate Intelligence
Committee report is not whether the Bush administration
bungled the prosecution of the war, or whether there
should have been greater international cooperation, or
whether the challenges of occupying and rebuilding the
country were grossly underestimated. When Kerry says
"they were wrong," he is referring to the
administration’s basic case for going to war. Kerry
supported that decision. So did Edwards. Were they
wrong? If they won’t answer that question, they have no
moral standing to criticize Bush.

Reluctance to answer the question is understandable. If
they say they stand by their pro-war votes, this makes
nonsense of their criticisms of Bush. If they say they
were misled or duped by the administration, they look
dopey and weak. Many of their Democratic Senate
colleagues were skeptical of the administration’s
evidence even at the time. If Kerry and Edwards tell
the probable truth - that they were deeply dubious
about the war but afraid to vote no in the post-9/11
atmosphere and be tarred as lily-livered liberals -
they would win raves from editorial writers for their
frankness and courage. And they could stop dreaming of
oval offices.

Kerry and Edwards are in a bind. But it is a bind of
their own making. The great pity will be if this bind
leads the Democratic candidates to back off from their
harsh, and largely justified, criticism of Bush. The
Democrats could lose a valuable issue, and possibly
even the election, because the Democratic candidates
were too clever for their own good.

In the past, Kerry has dodged the question of his pro-
war vote by saying that he intended to give Bush
negotiating leverage and to encourage multilateral
action, not to endorse a unilateral American invasion
of Iraq. Unfortunately, what he may have intended is
not what he voted for. Furthermore, a vote in favor of
the war resolution was unavoidably a statement that the
various complaints against Hussein did justify going to
war against him, if all else failed, whatever caveats
and escape hatches were in any individual senator’s
head.

Kerry and Edwards would like to fudge the issue by
conflating it with questions about how the war was
prosecuted. Or they say that what matters is where we
go from here. It is true that "what now?" is the
important policy question. But that doesn’t make it the
only question. How we got here affects how we get out.
And even if it had no practical relevance to our future
Iraq policy, hearing how Kerry and Edwards explain
their votes to authorize a war they now regard as
disastrous would be helpful in assessing their
character and judgment.

Their continued refusal to explain would be even more
helpful, unfortunately.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-kerry13jul13,1,7140264.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials