February 7, 2003 PERMALINK
If LiberalOasis Was Working For Dean...
(posted February 7 1:30 AM ET)
The insider media threw an elbow at Howard Dean yesterday and he should respond.
ABC's The Note (via Political Wire) said:
Has he boxed himself in a bit on Iraq?
He has said the United States should go in Iraq in the face of convincing evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Now, with his Democratic rivals all talking about how powerful the evidence is, he is left arguing that the evidence doesn't show that.
The New Republic blog &c took it farther, criticizing, "the gaping hole in Dean's logic...The man just isn't serious."
While the broader public isn't hearing this (or focused on Dean, or focused on the campaign), the punditocracy and the campaign beat reporters surely are.
That's a problem for Dean, because as the candidate most starving for cash, he needs the media on his side.
A lingering perception that he is being politically expedient, just playing to the base, and not sincere and smart in his views, could diminish the amount of his coverage.
So, he should take the criticism head on.
And fast, because once the bombs drop, all the candidates (except perhaps Kucinich and Sharpton) will have a practical need to nominally support the president.
If Dean is invited back to Meet The Press this Sunday (after being bumped last week), he'll have no choice but to explain his views in detail.
(UPDATE Feb. 7 2:30 PM ET -- No Dean on MTP Sunday.)
Regardless, it would be a good idea to give a real foreign policy speech and give his stance some intellectual heft.
(And by the way, get some foreign policy material on the campaign web site.)
LiberalOasis has a suggestion of how it should go.
Before that, keep in mind that what Dean has already said on the issue:
-- He's not a pacifist
-- If he was a congressman, he would not voted for the war resolution, but for the Biden-Lugar alternative, which called for multilateral action, but not for regime change
-- If there was hard evidence that Iraq was an imminent threat, he would go to the UN immediately. If he could not get support, he'd attack unilaterally in 60 days
-- He said Powell's presentation did not make the case for "unilateral" action
And now, the rough outline of the speech Howard Dean should give:
War is certainly on the horizon, and I will fully support the president and the troops in that event.
But as a candidate for president, I have an obligation to explain how a President Dean would handle the current situation in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein is a murderous tyrant, and the people of Iraq and the world would be better off without him.
Sadly, he is not the only murderous tyrant in this world.
And while the proud US military can certainly take out Hussein, war always has unintended consequences.
Which is why we never choose war unless it is truly the last recourse.
It remains unclear to me, and to many Americans, why Iraq now?
Last fall, the message from the Bush Administration was that Saddam was one year away from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Of course, an operational nuclear weapons program would be an urgent threat and clear violation of past UN resolutions.
If there was evidence to support that, and I was president, I would not hesitate to present it to the UN, and I am confident I could secure committed international backing.
However, we don't hear any more the warning that Saddam is a year, or less than a year away, from a nuclear weapon.
In fact, Bush's arguments have been shifting and sloshing around during this entire process, culminating in Colin Powell's presentation this week.
Powell's presentation made one thing fairly clear.
Based on the recorded conversations among Iraqi officials, it appears that Iraq is trying to hide something.
But there is no evidence to suggest that the something is nuclear in nature.
Most likely, what is being hidden involves chemical and biological weapons, which obviously are serious problems.
Yet they do not pose nearly as ominous a threat as nuclear weapons would.
Since Saddam's overall arsenal is so depleted, thanks to what the inspectors and military action achieved in the 1990s, what chemical and biological weapons he may still possess are unlikely to add up to an imminent threat.
Saddam knows full well that if he ever attacked another nation with such weapons, the might of the US would strike him down.
And Saddam, unlike those in Al Qaeda, has no interest in being a martyr. On the contrary, this man wants to stay in power.
Why does he have them? Probably to use in the event that he is attacked. He doesn't have the military to successfully attack someone else.
That doesn't excuse it. We still need to disarm him of such weapons and uphold the UN resolutions. But it argues against war as the means.
Now George Bush and Colin Powell say that there is still a risk that a mere vial of deadly poison could be passed to Al Qaeda and cause substantial damage.
Yet the evidence of an Al Qaeda link to Iraq was widely considered to be the weakest argument in Powell's presentation.
The intelligence is not persuasive and raises more questions than answers.
The only thing that would push two long-time rivals like Saddam and Osama together is if Saddam knew that his demise is forthcoming. Then he would have nothing to lose.
Otherwise, they are not natural partners.
Osama wants to reign over an Islamist-Fascist theocracy. Saddam wants to rule via a secular cult of personality.
The Bush Administration knows as much. That is part of the reason why it is considering heightening the color-coded threat level to orange.
Because the prospect of war is making us less safe.
If the threat was truly imminent, we would have to attack, despite the increased risk of terror at home.
But it isn't. We have other options.
We could enhance the inspection process by sharing our intelligence. If the Iraqis refuse to destroy suspected weapons sites, we can attack those sites.
I have also said that we should work with the UN and act multilaterally.
In turn, some have noted that Bush is doing so. And a second resolution explicitly backing war is still possible.
Furthermore, I have said that if we had real evidence, and the UN did not support military action, I would go in unilaterally.
And so some have stated that I should be on board now, following Powell's speech.
But I am still not supportive of Bush's approach to date.
Even if the UN eventually backs this war, it is all too obvious that the resolution will be the result of overwhelming pressure and arm-twisting, not because of a true commitment from the international community that war is the only way.
A coalition created through browbeating is not as strong and effective as a coalition forged with common purpose.
To those who say that is an unreasonable standard, I simply point them to the Persian Gulf War carried out with the leadership of George Herbert Walker Bush.
As far as the evidence is concerned, evidence that would be truly compelling -- a strong link to Sept. 11 or Al Qaeda, or of a nuclear program -- is not on the table.
None of this is to say that our brave military won't get the job done. I have no doubt they will.
And this is not to say that the world wouldn't be better off without Saddam. Because it would.
But for world's lone superpower to do it, in the role of aggressor, broadcast for the Arab world to see on Al Jazeera, will likely serve to create more terrorists, not less, and make us less safe, not more.
Again, I suspect it will soon be inappropriate for me to criticize the President's foreign policy, once any war begins. And so you may not hear me speak on this for some time.
But as a candidate for the office of president, I want the voters to know that in a Dean presidency, Al Qaeda would have been the primary focus.
North Korea, a far likelier candidate to sell weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, would not have been blithely neglected.
And Iraq would have been dealt with, in a sensible, steady, multilateral way.
