John Kerry is a man of great
personal courage, which served him well as a naval officer in the
Vietnam War. But the man who takes the inaugural oath next January
won't be asked to lead a bayonet charge. A more vital quality in a
president is moral courage. And trying to detect evidence of that
attribute in Kerry is like expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov to show up at
the county fair.
The latest proof that Kerry's backbone is made of goose down was his
statement that even if he had known what he knows now about Iraq's
imaginary weapons of mass destruction and mythical partnership with Al
Qaeda, he still would have voted for the resolution authorizing
President Bush to go to war. "I believe it's the right authority for a
president to have," he said.
The Iraq war is shaping up to be
the greatest American foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. It has
killed nearly 1,000 American soldiers and wounded more than 6,000,
while tying down 140,000 troops whose numbers are inadequate for the
challenge. Its price tag has reached $150 billion, with more costs to
come. The war and occupation have alienated our friends, inflamed
anti-Americanism in the Arab world and diverted us from the war on Al
Qaeda. If those facts don't convince Kerry that his vote was a mistake,
it's hard to imagine what would.
Actually, it's not so hard to
imagine what would cause Kerry to recant: political expedience. The
Massachusetts senator firmly believes something he firmly believed when
he voted for the war resolution, which is that he should take the
politically safe course no matter what. So he's happy to straddle the
fence by criticizing Bush for taking us down the wrong road in Iraq,
while refusing to say Congress should have stopped him. And he figures
he can stand by his vote because opponents of the war have nowhere else
to turn.
But they can always turn to Ralph Nader, or just stay
home. When it comes to Iraq, after all, Kerry sounds an awful lot like
the guy who got us into this mess.
Like Bush, he wants help
from the UN, hopes our allies will send more troops and plans to bring
our soldiers home when Iraq is stable. In 1964, Barry Goldwater ran for
president on the slogan, "A choice, not an echo." Kerry is all echo and
no choice.
None of this should come as a surprise. Kerry had
made the political error of opposing the 1991 Gulf war, which turned
out to be a military and political triumph, and he was not about to
repeat the mistake. This time, he favored a compromise requiring the
president to return to the Senate before invading Iraq. But when it
failed, Kerry dutifully joined the parade to war.
Why? "Bush
was saying, `I dare you to vote against this war,'" a Kerry aide
recently explained to Time magazine. "Of course, John had his
substantive reasons for voting for the war. ... But I'm pretty sure
there was a political calculation too. John decided not to give Bush
what he really wanted: a no vote." Put in plain English, Kerry was not
about to take any political risk just because it might help avert a
disaster.
A lot of Democrats have had to suppress their gag
reflex to line up behind someone with this record. During the
primaries, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said the resolution "was an
abdication and a failure on the part of Congress. And Sen. Kerry was
part of that failure." But such simple truths are no longer expressed
out loud.
Kerry's impulse to evade the issue also shows up in
his plans for Iraq. Accepting the Democratic nomination two weeks ago,
he devoted only one paragraph to his solution, which was pure cotton
candy: sweet but lighter than air. His remedy is "a president who has
the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden,
reduce the cost to American taxpayers and reduce the risk to American
soldiers." In other words, a president with a fairy godmother.
But this is the same guy who, during the first Gulf war, sent out form
letters to constituents taking both sides of the issue. And it's the
same guy who said before the vote on this war resolution, "I have the
ability either way to make substantive arguments for what I'm doing."
Can anyone doubt him on that?
It has been said by many critics
that President Bush, after bungling his job in the Iraq war, has
stubbornly refused to admit he was wrong. The same goes for John Kerry.