John Kerry: Right on Iraq

I guess it's time for a little rhetorical bomb throwing, starting with the title - but as a reaction to a diary calling out the leading Dem in the House as an idiot, it seems only appropriate.

My point is this: John Kerry gave the right answer, the only good answer, to the hypothetical question: "Knowing what you know now, would you have voted to go to war in Iraq?"

The key is in the hypotheticals.

This question is deliberately phrased in a hypothetical manner so as to be misleading.  It's a trap, a trick question, which is why Bush kept asking it until Kerry stood up and gave the right answer, thereby causing the media pundits and a ton of blogosphere folks to have a giant bug out, convinced that Kerry was... either ill-advised, or just plain stupid.

We're in Iraq now, and we need to stabilize it and get out.  We need real leadership to do that.  We can't turn back the clock and we can't have the Congress vote over again.  The president, as Commander in Chief, has to lead during wartime given the facts as they are now.

Why, then, did Bush conjure up a hypothetical question asking us to look differently at a very real situation in the present by imagining what would have happened?

It's to trick us, those of us who wish to God we'd never been misled into this miserable clusterf*&k of a war, into declaring Kerry's answer wrong.  It's to make us look at a hypothetical situation - the possibility of never having invaded Iraq - and blame Kerry for the reality of the mess we have now.

The fact is, George W Bush is responsible for this war.  The fact is, hypothetical situations are only useful as campaign rhetoric; whoever is president next January will be responsible for this war.  We are asking John Kerry to step in and clean up George W Bush's mess and everybody knows it's a hell of a tough job.  If Kerry says "No, I would not have voted for the Iraq war resolution," he effectively disavows responsibility for this mess.   Now, we'd be perfectly happy with that, those of us who trust Kerry implicitly on defense and security issues.  Those of us who are already voting for him.

Swing voters also know what kind of mess we're in right now and they know who caused it, and this works in Kerry's favor - unless he falls into the trap of refusing to clean it up.  Why would people trust Kerry to take over as commander in chief during this mess of a war, if he's already disavowed it, already abdicated his responsibility to clean it up and get us out?  Then, the natural reaction is to say, let the guy who started it finish it, because this mess has to be cleaned up and that guy Kerry doesn't want anything to do with it.

Yes, the media pundits will go after Kerry regardless, but I believe the question was a trap and the easy answer would have been a potentially fatal mistake.  Bush gets to be strong and wrong, so let's hammer on the wrong part.  

And, for a final bomb, here's what may have been a fatal mistake: George W Bush saying "I don't think we can win the war on terror."  Both candidates got hit with tough questions that boiled down to this: we are where we are, so do you accept responsibility and lead or do you waver?

George W Bush wavered. John Kerry didn't.

•  Kerry should use this speech !

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62546-2004Sep4.html

  Man, It would be a great acceptance speech for Kerry. Lay out real differences between Kerry and Bush and probably kill the flip-flop stupid charges.

  by desperate04 on Sun Sep 05, 2004 at 11:55:20 PM PDT

•  I think you're deluding yourself

  On the McLaughlin Group today, the host John McLaughlin said that neither Nixon nor Reagan would have invaded Iraq, in Bush's shoes. You're saying that Kerry has said that he would have.

  So Kerry painted himself as more militaristic and belligerent than both Nixon and Reagan. I'm sorry, but I can't see that as a good thing.

  And please don't tell me that Kerry's doing the best he can, given the terms of the debate. True leaders set the terms of the debate. Since the Dem convention, it is the Rethugs who have been doing that.

  by Alexander on Sun Sep 05, 2004 at 11:56:48 PM PDT

  •  Kerry fumbled the ball on that questin

    Knowing what we know today, the US should not have invaded Iraq, period.

    But Kerry knows that he is getting a lot of support in the armed forces, and he doesn't want to turn them off him. They're stuck in the mud of Iraq, and they need to feel support. If he had said No - the GOP would have been all over him for not showing the troops any support.

    He could have said that "America rushed to war, when there was no rush. Knowing me, you know I wouldn't have done that. But if I had found strong reasons to go to war, I would have done so."

    By saying Yes, without really qualifying it in a manner that was picked up in sound-bites, he walked into Bush's trap. He wanted to sound as if he supported his vote for the war - yet his qualifier about the country being misled into war did not tag along.

    He's made that up since - and it's not a big point until we get to the debates. This is a question that is certain to be raised then, and which the two candidates will have to answer (in Bush's case without Cheney babysitting him).

    by SteinL on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:05:24 AM PDT

  •  Could you try to go with

    "we disagree" instead of taking a jab at my state of mind, please?

    I'm saying the hypothetical situation of would he have invaded is only useful in setting rhetorical traps.  Talking about whether Nixon or Reagan would have invaded is talking 100% pure meaningless nonsense.  Kerry can only deal with the reality of the situation as it stands.  Bush brings up hypotheticals in order to muddy the waters and confuse the media, and to hopefully get Kerry to tell voters he's not willing to clean up Bush's mess, so they had better let Bush do it.

    by daria g on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:08:40 AM PDT

    •  I'm sorry

      But being logically consistent is not the same thing as being "right". That's the only thing I had in mind about your state of mind.

      by Alexander on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:17:52 AM PDT

    •  I've thought some more about the "trap"

      Where I disagree with you is in what the trap Bush (or rather Rove) set for Kerry is. You wrote, "It's to make us look at a hypothetical situation - the possibility of never having invaded Iraq - and blame Kerry for the reality of the mess we have now."

      I don't think that that's what the trap was, and I don't think their's anything wrong in asking the "hypothetical question" of whether it was a good idea to invade Iraq. The trick was to force Kerry into saying yes, he still would have voted for the resolution: if he said no, that would "prove" that he is a flip-flopper. Once he said yes, the hope was that Kerry would be trapped in the position of not being able to criticize Bush for starting the war, since his voting yes meant that Kerry was for the war, too.

      Fortunately, that was not much of a trap, since of course a vote for the war resolution was not a vote for the war Bush started. So Kerry is in fact able to criticize Bush for starting the war (i.e., to talk about "hypothetical situations"), and has been doing so, calling it "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time".

      So the trick worked, but the trap was broken.

      by Alexander on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:40:05 PM PDT

  •  Re: I think you're deluding yourself

    "John McLaughlin said that neither Nixon nor Reagan would have invaded Iraq, in Bush's shoes. You're saying that Kerry has said that he would have."

    No she's not.  Repeat slowly after me:

    - Voting to give the President war authorization after he'd requested it in order to force Iraq to allow the return of weapons inspectors

    is a very different thing than

    - Deciding to invade Iraq

    ---

    Look, I understand why Republicans would deliberately confuse those two things.  It's in their interests to muddle the issue and make Kerry look like he's on both sides.

    But I honestly don't understand how anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the issue could have difficulty understanding the actual difference.  It's not all that complex.

    by NoDissentAllowed on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:19:04 AM PDT

    •  Delusion

      I don't think for a moment that a President John Kerry would have gotten us into this mess in Iraq.  

      At the same time, who didn't think - know - that GWB would use the IWR to subvert the UN process and launch an attack on Iraq?  The passage of the IWR wasn't to strengthen GWB's hand.  It was a vote for war.  

      That said, I don't think John Kerry is necessarily in a bad place politically.  He can stand where most of the electorate is.  They were for it, but they didn't think Bush would fuck it up this badly.  

      by HarveyMilk on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:53:11 AM PDT

    •  But.. but.. but.. I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

      Isn't Kerry saying he would have invaded Iraq?  Or is he being nuanced again?  Isn't that confusing people?  How do we handle this nuance?  Isn't Bush just telling it like it is to the American people, and anyway, wouldn't you rather have a beer with him?

      

      by daria g on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 09:51:31 AM PDT

    •  It isn't all that complex.

      Here's what you said: "But I honestly don't understand how anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the issue could have difficulty understanding the actual difference.  It's not all that complex."

      Most Americans have NO KNOWLEDGE of the issue, and they aren't interesred in finding out the facts either. They operate by feel, by instinct. And when the news about Kerry is always defensive and complaining, and whining, and Bush always agressively attacking, they get a FEEL for who is strong and who is weak.

      So you're right the Repugs have every right to confuse things -- that's politics -- but it's our duty not to give them the ammunition to screw us. To do so is dumb politics. and what Kerry did was dumb.
      

      by Lords on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 09:53:27 AM PDT

    •  Re: I think you're deluding yourself

      Maybe. But Daria was stressing that Kerry was not washing his hands of the Iraq mess. She nowhere said that Kerry wouldn't have invaded in Bush's place. So I think it was open to me to jump to the conclusion that Kerry's vote for the war resolution was an indication that he supported the war. I actually think that that's the trap that BushCo set, not the trap that Daria was talking about. The trick is not "to make us ... blame Kerry for the reality of the mess we have now." It is to trap Kerry into a position from which he cannot criticize Bush for having started the war.

      Fortunately, the trap is not a hard one to break out of, since Kerry has been criticizing Bush on exactly this lately.

      by Alexander on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:27:34 PM PDT

•  Kerry was wrong on Iraq

  Wrong in his 2002 vote and wrong in his Grand Canyon answer about it.

  You are pointing out that he has been logically consistent on his Iraq stance, which is true. But that doesn't mean it was the right choice, morally or politically.

  by eugene on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:04:02 AM PDT

  •  Politically

    I think it was the right choice as well.

    Morally, I think the war was wrong.  George W Bush chose to take us to war.  It's on him.  Did Kerry have a moral imperative to stop the war?  This would have required a lot more than switching his vote, it might have been essentially impossible, but we can't know.

    by daria g on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:12:16 AM PDT

    •  Kerry's response was wrong

      morally and politcally.

      On the moral front Kerry's position undermines the notion of an international order based on the rule of law. To authorize the President to wage war on a country that posed no threat is to authorize a violation of international law, regardless of Kerry's intent to force weapons inspections particularly since by the logic of the question the weapons inspections would confirm that there was no basis for war. In addition the vote undermined the US Constitution which prevents one person, the President, from having the power to make war. With his answer Kerry effectively repudiated his strong moral stand against the vietnam war.

      And that's the political error. There was a trap allright. But it was Kerry, not anti-war Dems, who fell into it. Bush/Rove knew that Kerry didn't want to be seen as a flip flopper so they tricked him into   giving Bush a pass on starting the war and all of the moral critique that goes with it, instead leaving Kerry to focus on the competence issue of how the President went to war and has waged it. This leaves Kerry unable to make the same case he made in his 1971 Congressional testimony even though it is exactly applicable to the war in Iraq.

      Kerry does not have to support the war in order to be seen as able to finish the job whatever that means. His argument could have been how can we trust the guy who made this mess to get out of it.

      by Lcohen on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 10:19:37 AM PDT

•  Kerry should

  not have answered the question in the first place. When you're the challenger, you don't answer questions, you ask them. Kerry sets the rules of the game from here on out.

  by Rhett on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:13:41 AM PDT

  •  Exactly

    There was a simple straight-forward answer.  "Tell President Bush that is a ridiculous hypothetical question, and I don't waste my time on ridiculous hypothetical questions."

    by Dancing Larry on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 01:15:27 AM PDT

    •  Then Bush says

      "First he was for the war. Then he voted against body-armor for the troops. NOW, he won't even say if he supports the war or not." And he keeps repeating this over and over. Taunting Kerry to say whether he stands by his vote, or supports the war.

      I still think refusing the hypothetical would have been the best thing to do (made a comment about this downthread), but, given the way Bush manipulates war sentiment, this had risks too.

      by awol on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 01:29:34 AM PDT

      •  Remeber they don't need logic

        No matter what Kerry says they are going to twist it into an attack. The smart response is to answer with an attack....

        Q: Knowing what you know now...?

        A: You mean if the President hadn't lied to us? If the President had told the truth there wouldn't have been a vote."

        by Lcohen on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 10:04:24 AM PDT

•  How can anyone say. . .

  He gave the right answer, when everyone perceives him as giving the wrong answer because he failed to distinguish himself from Bush,  and whether fairly or unfairly, he made it possible for Bush to ridicule him?

   IMO it is only in our predisposed world where Kerry can do no wrong, we find that Bush wavered and Kerry didn't.  

  In the real world, Bush stuck to his convictions and Kerry agreed with him.  Fact is, if Kerry had really done the right thing we wouldn't be discussing it now, a month later.

  by Lords on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:30:25 AM PDT

  •  It's true though

    Bush totally whiffed when asked a tough, straightforward question about the war on terror.  Of course Kerry can do wrong, but here, he wasn't wrong - he was just presented with a situation where there was bound to be handwringing and attacks no matter what was said.  Difference is the handwringing comes from people who are mostly already voting for him.

    So yeah, many people on this site and some in the media consider Kerry to have given the wrong answer.  That doesn't make the alternate answer right.  The alternative answer means failing the CINC test - it means right now, we'd be discussing how to ward off the meme that Bush should stay in office to finish his war, because his opponent won't take charge of it.

    by daria g on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 05:38:31 AM PDT

•  The best metaphor I've seen

  at this blog or any other has been the following:

  Congress (incl. Kerry) voted to load the gun and hand it over to the President.

  It was the President who misfired.

  -----

  I'm also of the belief that Kerry will never say the war (or his vote) was a mistake until the troops are home.  Thirty-plus years ago, he criticized Nixon for saying Vietnam was a mistake and then leaving troops in Vietnam for a long time.

  by Newsie8200 on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 12:33:18 AM PDT

•  You make a persuasive case.

  But I can't imagine why "No, I wouldn't have voted to authorize force" and "I can fix this" are mutually exclusive concepts or even why a voter would imagine them to be.  You say:

  If Kerry says "No, I would not have voted for the Iraq war resolution," he effectively disavows responsibility for this mess.

  I don't think that's so.  It was a hypothetical question and that's where Bush left the door open.  If Kerry had weighted the hypothetical element handed him, he'd have been fine.

  "Knowing what I know now?  Knowing that there were no WMDs and that George Bush was aware of this or should been? You mean, knowing that although Mr. Bush was aware that Iraq posed zero threat to the US he would allow a thousand of our children to be killed and thousands more crippled or disfigured?  Knowing, as I do now, that George Bush's war on Iraq would be at the expense of The War on Terror?

  "Knowing that when he told us his war would cost 1.7 billion dollars, he was lying?  That the figure would reach 200 billion with no end in sight?  And knowing that Mr. Bush would squander the goodwill and cooperation we enjoyed around the world, goodwill and cooperation it took a literal lifetime to build?  Goodwill and cooperation that are essential to fighting the actual terrorists? Knowing these things would I have voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq?  Not in a million years.  Yet here we are.  Now let's fix it"

  I just don't see that there's much Republican hay to be made from a statement like that. I think "Yeah, but Sadaam was a bad man" would just...lay...there.

  by Pyewacket on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 01:08:19 AM PDT

  •  This illustrates Daria G's point, I think

    If Kerry gives this answer, Bush turns it around on him viciously. Basically, he paints Kerry as saying the troops are there dying for nothing. We understand that saying "I wouldn't support this war" and "I support the troops" are not mutually exclusive. But I think we call can also see how Bush would go to town on this.

    This diary is one of the smartest attempts I've seen to explain Kerry's comment. I still think it would have been better to refuse the hypothetical, but this has a downside as well: Bush keeps repeating it and repeating it, and essentially taunting Kerry (this is what he was doing, we remember, when Kerry finally answered the question). In retrospect, I think Kerry needed to refuse the hypothetical and start throwing back a question at Bush, over and over again.

    But this diary -- and this thread -- are full of interesting points. I also agree with the  point about the debates: it will give Kerry another chance to gain more traction on Bush's war.

    by awol on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 01:25:14 AM PDT

    •  Yes, it was a fiendishly clever question.

      And it's funny, we're offering hypothetical responses to a hypothetical question that might have been better ignored -- y'know, hypothetically.

      I'm sure the campaign did a cost/benefit and landed where they did.  I've just never thought they stuck the landing.

      PS:  I'm post scripting this because I want it to be a throwaway and not the next move in a rhetorical chess match.  The counter to "Kerry's saying the troops died for nothing" is moral outrage, turn it back on him.  "'Died for nothing'??  How dare Mr. Bush suggest that?!  These were soldiers.  They went to war because their leaders told them to.  Because we, the American people, mislead as we were, asked them to.  They are no less heroes than the soldiers who died on the beach at Normandy.  If Mr. Bush had gone to war he might better understand that."  

      by Pyewacket on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 01:44:56 AM PDT

    •  Dying for nothing.

      You make the point: "If Kerry gives this answer, Bush turns it around on him viciously. Basically, he paints Kerry as saying the troops are there dying for nothing."

      But isn't that the truth? The troops are there dying for nothing.
      WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY DYING FOR?  Kerry just did not have the nerve to fully engage Bush on this issue.  Remember the question -- if we knew THEN what we know NOW.  

      What we know now is that neither Iraq nor Saddam was a threat to anyone in anyway.  The problem is that Kerry and the Dems have spent so long appeasing the Republicans and being afraid of them they can no longer distinguish truth from farce.

      This should have been his line of attack: Bush lied the country into an unnecessary war for his own vainglory. And THAT would have been the truth. Instead we find ourselves playing on their turf agreeing about how much of a tyrant Saddam was, and removing him was worth 1000 lives and $138 billion.

      So yes, our troops are dying for nothing. If you don't agree, please tell me what exactly do you think they are dying for?

      by Lords on Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 09:36:04 AM PDT