The Menace

[MrSoundAndVision]

This is from The New Republic magazine, entitled the Menace:

Howard Dean knows the perils of trying to have it both ways on Iraq. After all, he has spent the last year clobbering John Kerry for supporting war in the Senate while denouncing it on the campaign trail. So imagine Dean's surprise when, at the October 9 Democratic debate in Phoenix, Dennis Kucinich turned the charge against him. "This morning, in The New York Times, wouldn't take a position on the eighty-seven billion dollars, and the governor says that he's still for keeping seventy thousand troops in Iraq," said Kucinich. "Now, it's either right or wrong. If we're wrong to be there, as I believe we are, we should get our troops out."

Kucinich, of course, is no threat to Dean's front-runner status. But his critique does make a certain sense. Dean's attacks hurt Kerry because the logic behind them was so clear: If you think the war is so bad, why did you vote for it? Today, however, the debate has largely shifted from war to postwar. Dean and other leading Democrats are calling the Iraq occupation a disaster that is breaking the bank, poisoning America's reputation around the world, and sending young men and women home in body bags. To which Kucinich asks a logical question: If you think the postwar is so bad, why not bring Americans home?

None of the leading Democrats want to withdraw from Iraq, but their refusal to plausibly answer Kucinich's question may be pushing them in that direction. Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, and--more ambiguously--Dean, all opposed President Bush's $87 billion reconstruction request because they said he lacked a plan to win the peace in Iraq. But that's not true. Bush does have a plan, even if he's not quite honest about it: It's for the United States to stabilize and rebuild Iraq largely alone, by pouring in money and handing over security to hastily trained Iraqi forces. The Democratic candidates may dislike that strategy, but it is they who have no practical alternative.

Asked what they would do in Iraq, Dean, Kerry, Edwards, and Clark all give the same response: hand over political control to the United Nations and bring in lots of foreign troops. It has been left to debate moderators to note that, while that might have been a plausible strategy six months ago, it is wishful thinking today. "You make it sound very simple," CNN's Judy Woodruff said to Clark at the Phoenix debate. "We'll go to the U.N. They'll bring their . ... We're finding out that's been very, very difficult to do." A month earlier in Baltimore, Juan Williams asked Edwards, "If international forces don't show up , should we increase the U.S. presence or leave?" Edwards replied, "Well, I don't accept that premise."

But that premise happens to be reality. In Phoenix, Clark proposed turning "the economic and political piece over to the United Nations; they can do it best." They can't do it from Turtle Bay, however, which is where the U.N.'s Iraq staff is today, having fled after an August 19 car bomb killed 23 U.N. officials. Clark and other Democrats have a chicken-and-egg problem: They want the United Nations to help stabilize Iraq, but the United Nations won't return until Iraq is stable and its staff can work safely. In the meantime, "the economic and political piece" will, by necessity, be run by the United States.

In addition to U.N. political control, the Democrats want large infusions of foreign troops. Kerry has demanded that the Bush administration "have other troops on the ground share the burden." A September 4 press release from Dean's campaign explained that the former governor "believes in an international force in Iraq." But, unfortunately, the rest of the world no longer does. Given the recent escalation of violence, there is zero chance that foreign governments will fork over lots of new troops. Even Poland and Spain, America's staunchest pro-war allies, sent troops only to the safest zone in Iraq. Perhaps, when the security situation improves, foreign governments will grow less skittish. But, then, when the security situation improves, foreign troops will no longer be needed.

Opposing Bush's reconstruction plan, and lacking a realistic one of their own, the Democratic candidates are vulnerable to Kucinich's logic. After all, if you don't have a strategy for winning the peace in Iraq, why stay? Democratic public opinion is clearly moving in this direction. A CBS poll in late August found that 53 percent of Democrats wanted the United States to either increase troop levels in Iraq or hold them steady, versus 37 percent who wanted to decrease the number. By last week, that figure had reversed itself. In a late October Washington Post/ABC News poll, 54 percent of Democrats said the "U.S. should withdraw forces from Iraq to avoid casualties," while only 40 percent wanted to keep them there.

With the exception of Joseph Lieberman, who courageously notes that the United States may need to send more troops to Iraq, leading Democratic candidates are subtly shifting closer to Kucinich. Back in April, Dean proposed that American troops stay in Iraq for more than two years. On NBC's "Meet the Press" in June, he said, "I know that we don't have enough people in Iraq. I know that General Shinseki said that we need three hundred thousand troops to go into Iraq."

But, today, Dean no longer thinks the United States has too few troops in Iraq; he thinks we have too many. A recent Dean commercial fretted, "One hundred thirty thousand troops in Iraq with no end in sight." And, in early October, he told The New York Times he would reduce American troop levels to 70,000 (while bringing in 110,000 mostly Muslim and Arab troops). Yet even that 70,000 proposal, paired with his skepticism about the $87 billion, leaves him vulnerable to Kucinich, who pledges to bring home all the troops by year's end.

The unhappy truth is that, by mishandling postwar Iraq and alienating much of the world, the Bush administration has left the United States with two bad options: rebuild Iraq largely alone, at great cost in money and lives (and with no guarantee of success), or withdraw largely alone, in a Vietnam-like defeat. The leading Democratic presidential contenders, who like most candidates hate tough choices, are trying to pretend they don't have to make one. But the longer they oppose the Bush reconstruction strategy, the more they will find themselves pushed toward the alternative, which is no reconstruction at all. On Iraq, Kucinich now represents the Democratic vanguard. Unless the other candidates face reality, he could soon represent the Democratic mainstream.

Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.