For the most part, John Kerry has a far more sensible Iraq policy than George W. Bush does, and this should serve him well in the campaign. Yet if Kerry is not careful, Bush's quagmire could turn into Kerry's.
In his speeches, Kerry has warned that we need to remove the "Made in America" label from the occupation. Kerry would give a UN High Commissioner for Governance and Reconstruction dominant role. He would replace the US force with a NATO force under an American military commander.
So far, so good.
But in other remarks, Kerry has occasionally suggested that having blundered into this mess, we owe it to the Iraqis to "stay the course." He told CNN that he thought the administration's June 30 deadline for turning over authority was unrealistic, implying a longer US occupation. At times, Kerry has even suggested that for a time we might need to put in more troops to protect the ones already there.
The trouble with this stance is that the Iraq occupation is turning out to be a complete disaster-for Bush and for America's role in the world. The war stands condemned as both a practical failure and now, with revelations of something close to torture of Iraqi prisoners, a moral failure as well.
Public opinion is very rapidly turning against this needless war. If Kerry does get elected, he will need to drastically change the policy. But in the meantime he has to be very careful not to make the war his own
This brings me to Ralph Nader. Other things being equal, Nader will get very little support in November 2004. However, if millions of American voters are absolutely appalled with the combat deaths, the disgusting photos of prisoner abuses and the plummeting stature of the US in the world, the Democratic candidate had better fully distance himself from this war. Otherwise, Nader could actually siphon off some votes.
Kerry, certainly, is well positioned to reclaim the Democrats' legacy of being the more effective foreign policy realists. It is a legacy that runs from Franklin Roosevelt, through Truman and JFK, and after destructive detour in the 1960s, again to Bill Clinton. Realism means knowing when to use force, when to involve the international community, when to broker peace, and what the vital interests and threats really are.
The 9/11 commission hearings made clear that Clinton had a far better sense of the terrorist threat than the Bush people, and a better sense of proportion regarding when it made sense intervene militarily. Truman, likewise, opted for containing the Soviet Union rather than launching World War III. Kennedy steered the US away from nuclear confrontation and then began the era of arms control, all the while being firm against Soviet expansionism. It was Johnson's delusional policy in Vietnam, followed by the backlash by much of the Democratic rank and file, that left the Democratic Party with a fractured legacy of seeming simultaneously reckless and feeble, a legacy that Kerry is still trying to live down on behalf of his party.
But Bush has done Kerry the political favor of associating the Republican right with a foreign policy that is simultaneously more reckless and more weak than anything the Democrats did. And in his eagerness to demonstrate his foreign policy credentials, Kerry needs to remember that realism is not the same as bravado.
There have been moments in the Kerry campaign, however, when the candidate seemed to be listening to those who equate Democratic foreign policy leadership with simple hawkishness. If Bush wants 30,000 more troops, call for 40,000.
But nobody can out-swagger George Bush. If Kerry prevails, he will beat Bush on foreign policy by being the more prudent and sensible. Just as the sheer unpopularity of the Korean and Vietnam wars ruined Democratic incumbents, the calamity of Iraq will speak for itself in undermining Bush.
This leaves the practical question of what Kerry, as president, should actually do. As he has repeatedly suggested, he would need to multilateralize the process of keeping the peace in Iraq. To get the necessary international support, he would need to persuade other nations that the US would genuinely share power.
Beyond that, Kerry needn't go into excessive detail. Eisenhower didn't when he promised in 1952, "I will go to Korea," nor did Nixon when he declared in 1968 that he had "a plan" for peace in Vietnam.
This mess is all George Bush's. Kerry should cut it a wide berth.
Robert Kuttner is a Prospect co-editor. A version of this article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.
