December 29, 2003, U.S. Edition

The Democrats' Own Quagmire
Dean says he thought the war was a terrible blunder, but now that we're there, we should stay and see it through. This makes no sense

The effort by his democratic rivals to portray Howard Dean as the reincarnation of George McGovern will not work. Dean is not a peacenik. If you read his foreign-policy speech given in Los Angeles on Dec. 15--the one being roundly criticized--you will be struck by how centrist and sensible it is. In it, Dean is tough on terrorism and proposes several intelligent policies, such as a vastly bigger effort to deal with "loose nukes" in the former Soviet Union and beyond. He outlines a vigorous, internationalist foreign policy that is not much different from that of the other Democratic candidates. And yet his position on the Iraq war will plague him, politically and intellectually.

Being against the Iraq war doesn't make you a pacifist. During Vietnam, opposition to the war signaled a broader opposition to American involvement in the world. Many of those against that war were against all war. In the case of Iraq, while pacifists demonstrated in the streets, the mainstream opposition had a disagreement on strategy. Iraq, they argued, was a distraction from the war on terror; in fact it hurt the main struggle. I disagree--for one example, look at the effect of the Iraq war on Libya's decision to disarm--but it's a plausible thesis and not one indicating isolationism.

The broader problem, however, is that the Iraq war has happened. Arguing against it now is refighting history rather than presenting a vision for the future. More important, today the reconstruction of Iraq is at the center of American foreign policy. In dollars, public attention and potential consequences, it is the largest single project that the United States has undertaken in a generation. President George W. Bush has placed it at the heart of his world view, making an eloquent case that helping to turn Iraq into a stable, modern and democratic state will send a signal across the Middle East, encourage economic and political reform and stem the forces that fuel terrorism. The Democrats have to decide where they stand on this basic, big issue.

Dean says he thought the war was a terrible blunder—a "catastrophic mistake," said Al Gore when endorsing him--but now that we're there, we should stay and see it through. This makes no sense. If the war was a blunder--draining resources and distracting Washington--the smartest thing to do is get out fast. Dean has argued that America must stay in Iraq because it cannot allow the country to become a base for Al Qaeda. But that outcome could easily be avoided by our pulling out and turning the place over to a general or Shiite leader who will also have no interest in having his country become a Qaeda base. Why bother helping in a massive transformation of politics, economics and society in Iraq? In a sense, the most consistent Democrat in the race is not Dean, but Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says the war was a mistake, so let's leave now.

Some Democrats, like Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, have criticized the administration for having a worthy goal but doing a good thing badly. And there's much to criticize. The reconstruction has been botched from the start, with too few troops, weak leadership (remember Jay Garner?), self-defeating arrogance and now (at least the appearance of) a cut-and-run transfer of power. It has produced problems that were predictable--indeed were predicted. But to make this critique effectively, the Democrats have to buy into the basic goal of Iraq policy. If Howard Dean has his way, the party of Woodrow Wilson will be decidedly uninterested in the most Wilsonian project in recent history.

As a political strategy, the antiwar position is based on a bet that in six months Iraq will be at least as unstable and unsettled as it is now, and probably spiraling downward. If that is the case, the argument goes, President Bush's approval rating will keep dropping.

Perhaps. But if the situation in Iraq is scary, if instability is spreading across the country, America will be more fully and deeply engaged in a war with some very nasty enemies. In such a situation, will the average American--in, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan, states Democrats must win--look to Howard Dean to get them through the dangerous times, or to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell?

There is, of course, the possibility that things in Iraq will not look so bad six months from now. It's possible that the American armed forces will get better at handling the insurgency, that the rare spectacle of Middle Eastern caucuses and elections will be underway, that Iraqis will be having a spirited debate about what an Islamic democracy means and that Iraq will be seeing the stirring of genuine free-market activity. And what will be the Democratic Party's response to this reality? Will it still be explaining that the war was a "catastrophic mistake"?

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