The Kerry campaign has decided to go on offense on what many
perceive to be George W. Bush’s strong point — keeping America
safe from terrorists. Would Kerry really do a better job at making
America “safer and stronger” in a dangerous world? I have my
doubts.
The line pushed by the Kerry campaign is that by taking us into
an “unnecessary war” in Iraq, and “alienating our allies” Bush has
weakened America and made us less safe. Given that the senator from
Massachusetts voted to authorize the “unnecessary war” and his
running mate, Senator Edwards, stated that he would have gone to
war in Iraq even without U.N. approval, this charge is rather,
well, Kerryesque. Now that Kerry has decided that his real position
on Iraq is that he wanted to authorize a threat of force, but not
its actual use, he feels free to criticize the president for
sending troops to die in unnecessary wars. One problem with this
demonstration is that “nuancing” positions every few months
depending on the political climate does not make for good foreign
policy; it makes for disaster.
But getting beyond Kerry’s wavering leadership skills, how has
the war in Iraq made America “weaker” or “less safe?” One argument
is that it has bred hatred in the Muslim world against the United
States and helped al Qaeda recruit thousands of new terrorists. The
fact is, however, that in the 10 years prior to the invasion of
Iraq, al Qaeda or related organizations bombed the World Trade
Center, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, and, of course carried
out the September 11th attacks that killed 3,000 people. Al Qaeda
did not seem to have any problem getting recruits before the Iraq
war. Those thousands of recruits that graduated from Afghan
training camps apparently hated America even before George W. Bush
took office.
There is scant evidence that the American ouster of Saddam
Hussein (who was responsible for the death of more Muslims than
anyone in history) has been a major spark in motivating many
Muslims, not already so disposed, to devote their lives to
terrorism. Though the U.S. has been predictably excoriated in the
Arab press, the protests in Cairo and Damascus couldn’t hold a
candle to those in San Francisco and London. And the least that can
be said of George W. Bush’s conduct of the War on Terror (including
our actions in Iraq) is that it has resulted in the death or
capture of thousands of those would-be a Qaeda murderers —
including many senior al-Qaeda leaders.
The other main argument is that by “going it alone” in Iraq,
against the wishes of Saddam’s arms merchants, the French and the
Russians, we have squandered the “sympathy” we had from the rest of
the world after September 11th. But aside from sympathy, have we
really lost anything that makes us less safe and less strong?
AS HE OUTLINED IN his December 3rd address to the Council on
Foreign Relations, John Kerry believes that the U.S. will be
“respected” throughout the world if he, as president, prostrates
himself before the U.N. to personally “affirm that the United
States has rejoined the community of nations,” and vows never again
to take any military action of which Security Council permanent
members, and the supreme wielders of moral authority, France,
Russia, and communist China, may disapprove. That may make American
liberals feel warm and fuzzy, but I doubt it will win us much
“respect.” Making the U.N. Security Council a partner in our
national security decisions certainly won’t make us safer and
stronger.
Western Europeans have a history of not liking American foreign
policy. Certainly, America’s foreign policy, as is true of that of
any nation, seeks to protect its own interests. But America was,
and still is, called the “leader of the free world” for a reason.
And many western Europeans, perhaps too proud to admit that America
is, in fact, their benefactor, refuse to recognize that American
power in anyway is helping them, and are forced into believing that
American foreign policy must instead have some sinister motivation
(such as “imperialism.”) Looking back to the 1980s, it is
instructive to recall that despite fierce opposition from many
western European populations (and from John Kerry), the dangerous
cowboy president Ronald “Ray-Gun” went forward with plans to deploy
new missiles in Europe to counter Soviet moves. To many Europeans,
the United States under Reagan was just as dangerous to the world
as was the Soviet Union, and Reagan’s “provocative” actions were
not seen as defending Europe, but as manifestations of
unsophisticated American brute force in a struggle between two
superpowers in which the European people had no real interest. The
result was that we became less beloved in places like Belgium, but
we also won the Cold War without a firing shot as the Soviet empire
imploded. Was that a trade off that made us less safe and less
strong? I don’t know. That’s a close call.
Similarly, what has our “arrogance” today cost us? The
possibility of France and Germany and Russia sending a few thousand
troops to Iraq? No, not even the suave John Kerry could have
performed that miracle. Would better relations with the never
all-that- cooperative French make us safer and stronger than not
having Saddam in power in Iraq? We now know beyond a shadow of a
doubt that there were significant contacts between al-Qaeda and
Saddam’s Iraq. But since we cannot yet demonstrate a
“collaborative” relationship, many Democrats claim that those links
were of no threat to us. But on what basis do these anti-war
Democrats think that those al-Qaeda contacts would never have
turned “collaborative?” And since we know that Saddam did provide
direct aid to other terrorist groups, wasn’t it just as much of a
threat to us that Saddam’s Iraq might have shared its chemical or
biological know-how or inventory with any number of anti-American
terrorist groups, not just al-Qaeda? The removal of that threat
makes me feel a little bit safer than I would getting a gentle,
approving smile from Jacques Chirac.
THE FACT IS, IN THE MOST important tasks that most of our European
allies can help us with in the War on Terror — intelligence
gathering and the arresting of terrorist suspects — there has been
no fall back in cooperation since the Iraq war because our
interests are aligned. The French and Germans don’t have any
overriding commercial entanglements with al Qaeda like they had
with Saddam, so they are just as anxious to see Islamic terrorists
(at least those operating outside of the Levant) dealt a blow as
are we.
And it is also worth noting that since Bush started fighting the
War on Terror, not only do we continue to have the cooperation of
European intelligence services, we have also received much greater
cooperation from some formerly less than fully cooperative
frontline governments like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Libya (not
to mention Iraq and Afghanistan). That, in case you are wondering,
makes us both safer and stronger.
Regardless of what some may say about how Bush’s actions have
lost us “sympathy” or “credibility” in the world, you can be sure
that when Bush starts to rattle his saber, our enemies sit up at
take notice. They know that when Bush threatens the use of force,
he means it. Now what if, God help us, John Kerry becomes
president, and there is a crisis somewhere — say North Korea. Say
we dutifully go to the U.N. and the U.N. tells the North Koreans
that they had better stop what they are doing or the U.N. will get
very mad. And to support that threat president Kerry deploys a
large military force to Asia and gets a resolution from the
Congress authorizing him to use (or threaten?) force. What are the
North Korean’s going to think? They’re going to look at Kerry’s
position on the Iraq war and they’re going to think, well here’s a
president who already said that he believes in making empty
threats. And so president Kerry will either back down or launch a
war that a credible threat may have avoided. Is that what
the Democrats are talking about when they tell us that Kerry would
make us safer and stronger?
The proposition that Kerry would make us safer and stronger is
preposterous. But can the Kerry campaign convince enough Americans
of it to get him elected president? It’s quite possible, and that
is scary.
