President Bush likes to keep
things simple. He's boiled
his entire re-election campaign
down to one basic
promise: If you let me
keep my job, I'll keep you safe. This,
in turn, makes Sen. John Kerry's task
clear: He must persuade voters to fire
Bush precisely because he has made
America less secure, not more.
Bush is trying to frame the choice
facing voters in terms of character.
Rather than argue his case on the merits,
he is trying to contrast his steady
leadership on national security with
Kerry's alleged waffling on Iraq. It's a
clever misdirection play that diverts
public attention from the actual
results of the bad decisions Bush has so
steadfastly made. Kerry, meanwhile, is
trying to drive home the point that
resolve in the pursuit of failing policies
is no virtue. His chief case in point is,
of course, the mess Team Bush has
made of Iraq.
But while it's tempting for Kerry and
the Democrats to make the election a
referendum on Iraq, they need to keep
their eye on the bigger picture: The
greatest strategic challenge facing
America today is rallying the civilized
world to confront the tide of Islamic
extremism that is sowing nihilistic violence
around the globe. The historic
task for American leadership is to build
a broad international coalition, with the
trans-Atlantic alliance at its core, against
terrorism and the malignant ideology of
Osama bin Laden that inspires it. By
temperament and doctrine, the Bush
administration is ill-suited to rise to this
challenge. That is the most compelling
argument for a regime change in
Washington next year.
To his credit, Kerry has relentlessly
challenged the conventional assumption
that Republicans are tougher and
more competent in managing the
nation's security, and that Bush in particular
has a realistic strategy for making
Americans safer. In this argument,
his best ally is objective reality.
The fact is that the administration's
mistakes in Iraq are emblematic of
flaws in its overall approach to foreign
affairs. In Afghanistan, for example, the
administration's reluctance to put
enough U.S. forces on the ground
enabled bin Laden to slip from our
grasp and has left warlords effectively in
control of broad swaths of the country.
While no one doubts Bush's willingness
to wield America's military might, the
glaring security deficits in Afghanistan
and Iraq cast doubt on his ability to use
force effectively.
Meanwhile, the administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has dealt a mortal
blow to the doctrine of pre-emption,
Bush's audacious new blueprint for
U.S. national security in the post-9/11
world. It is now clear that we simply
don't know enough about what's really
happening in rogue states to justify a
policy of pre-emptive military attacks
on supposed WMD facilities. Yet the
doctrine has succeeded in rattling our
enemies -- especially charter "Axis of
Evil" members like North Korea and
Iran -- who have responded not by
meekly dismantling their nuclear programs,
but by accelerating them.
Although Vice President Dick
Cheney continually declares that the
conjuncture of terrorism and WMD is
the gravest threat facing America, the
administration has failed to put an
effective check on either North Korea's
or Iran's WMD programs. Bush's
counterproliferation policies have
been paralyzed by internal divisions
over whether to confront or engage
the two regimes. The administration
has failed repeatedly to get our
European allies, including Great
Britain, to take a tougher stance
against Iran. They seem wary of furnishing
a pretext for another U.S. military
action. This is one example of the
stiff diplomatic price we pay for Bush's
unilateralism, which has bred an
atmosphere of mistrust and resentment
between America and Europe.
In fact, it's hard to believe how
quickly and thoroughly trans-Atlantic
relations have deteriorated on Bush's
watch. This is a matter of style as well
as substance. The belligerent swagger,
the reluctance to listen and engage
critics intellectually, the manifest disdain
for multilateral diplomacy -- all
of these personal traits have abraded
European nerves and weakened deeply
ingrained habits of deference toward
U.S. views. Many of our friends are no
longer willing to give us the benefit of
the doubt; indeed, some now make a
point of withholding cooperation on
issues vital to us. Europeans are hardly
blameless: French and German leaders
especially have cynically exploited
anti-American prejudices. But the fact
remains that it will be difficult to
reforge trans-Atlantic unity as long as
Bush remains in the White House.
Global opinion surveys show that
America's standing has plummeted
around the world, not just in Europe.
Given our wealth and power, a certain
amount of envy and resentment is
inevitable. But the Bush administration
has utterly failed to grasp the
strategic necessity of reassuring others
about the way America uses its enormous
power. Now, instead
of seeing the United
States as a beacon of liberty,
too many see it as an
arrogant bully pursuing
its own selfish interests.
America's diminished
moral stature makes it harder to persuade
others to join in a long-term
strategy of economic and political
reform in the greater Middle East,
which is essential to break the nexus
between misgovernment and extremism.
Bush lately has called for spreading
freedom in the Muslim world as
the antidote to bin Ladenism. It's the
right message for the long haul, but
Bush is the wrong messenger. He is
viewed not as a disinterested tribune
of democracy, but as an advocate of
unbridled American power and
nationalist assertion. The administration's
willingness to subordinate
human rights and democracy to oil
and other interests in our relations
with autocratic regimes in Central
Asia, in Saudi Arabia, and, increasingly,
in Russia, has not helped.
There's little doubt that America's
heavy dependence on Middle Eastern
oil constrains our freedom of action in
dealing with the region's governments.
Yet, rather than accelerate the country's
shift from petro-dependence to "clean
energy" sources and technologies, the
Bush White House has thrown the
throttle into reverse. Having made
their careers in the oil patch, it's not
surprising that Bush and Cheney
would emphasize more domestic production,
including drilling the Alaskan
wilderness. But the country has only 3
percent of the world's known oil
reserves, so the "drain America first"
approach does nothing to reduce the
leverage that Persian Gulf countries
and other oil-rich states exercise over
American policy.
While energy independence is a far-off
goal, Kerry at least understands
that reducing our
reliance on fossil fuels is an
urgent strategic, economic,
and environmental imperative
for the United States.
Kerry also knows that to win hearts
and minds in the Muslim world, the
United States must show a renewed
commitment to a just peace between
Israel and the Palestinians. The Bush
administration, however, seems to
have subcontracted U.S. policy to
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
This has undercut America's image as
an honest broker and provided a propaganda
windfall to radicals whose
fondest wish is to foment a clash of
civilizations between Islam and the
West. To be sure, Sharon's proposal to
close settlements and withdraw from
the Gaza Strip is potentially a creative
step toward peace -- if it is part of a
larger plan that also encompasses the
other critical disputes between the
two sides.
But peace will not come through
unilateral fiat by Israel. To revive a
two-way dialogue, we need dynamic
U.S. leadership by a president willing
to commit his time, energy, and prestige
to finding responsible Palestinian
partners and nudging both sides
toward a peace deal. This is the hard,
often frustrating, work of leadership
through diplomacy, and, as Kerry has
pointed out, Bush has shown absolutely
no aptitude for it.
Finally, Kerry and the Democrats
should draw public attention to the
many ways the Bush administration
has undermined America's global economic
leadership. By plunging the
United States back into budget deficits
and doubling the nation's debt over
the next decade, Bush has drained our
government of the resources we need
to wage an effective war on bin
Ladenism, much less attend to pressing
domestic needs.
Under the Bush administration,
progress toward constructing a rulesbased
world trading system has also
slowed to a crawl. The White House's
embrace of a budget-busting
increase in agriculture subsidies
has contributed to the
impasse in the Doha Round
of World Trade Organization
talks. The Free Trade Area of
the Americas initiative -- touted early
by the White House as a top priority -- is going nowhere. And, evidently indifferent
to the economic stagnation that
plagues the greater Middle East, Bush
has failed to push aggressively for trade
initiatives that would open markets
there and give Muslim countries a
chance to grow.
Meanwhile, the need to finance
America's exploding budget deficits
has made us more dependent than
ever on foreign lenders. In a sign of
sagging confidence in the U.S. economy,
foreign investment in the
United States last year fell below $30
billion, which is not much more than
Ireland received. At home, lagging
export growth and a record-shattering
trade deficit have aggravated fears
that global trade itself is a threat to
the economic security of average
working families.
Almost any way one looks at the
past four years, the reputation Bush
enjoys as a visionary and effective
steward of our national security is
unearned. In part, his reputation
stems from the fact that he was president
on Sept. 12, 2001, and in part
it stems from the Republicans' longstanding
advantage on questions of
national security. Is Bush steadfast?
Yes, but what good is a steady hand
on the wheel if the ship is steaming
toward the rocks?
The record is clear: Bush has charted
an unsafe and unsound course for
America in the world. For that reason
alone, the voters should order him off
the bridge and call for a new captain.
