Michael Kinsley, in an op-ed piece last week, highlighted the strangeness of the debate over the continuing war in Iraq. Or, rather, he highlighted the strange lack of debate.
Kinsley notes that today's anti-war arguments echo the pro-war arguments from Vietnam:
What seems to be today's antiwar position — it was a terrible mistake and it's a terrible mess, but we can't just walk away from it — was actually the pro-war position during Vietnam. In fact, it was close to official government policy for more than half the length of that war.
Today's antiwar cause doesn't even have a movement, to speak of, let alone an agenda. It consists of perhaps 47 percent of the citizenry — the ones who voted for John Kerry — who are in some kind of existential opposition to the war but don't know what they want to do about it.
Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers die by the hundreds and Iraqis — military and civilian — by the thousands in a cause these people (and I'm one of them) believe to be a horrible mistake.
It's an intriguing piece, so go read the whole thing. But in challenging one aspect of the unquestioned conventional wisdom, Kinsley also reinforces another assumption of the CW — the idea that Sen. Kerry's position on the war in Iraq was not substantially different from President Bush's.
This assumption arises from the similar set of vague and unpromising steps — an international summit, training more Iraqi troops more quickly — that both men suggested in response to the question, "what next?"
As Kinsley notes, Kerry's position was not to end the adventure and bring the troops home, but:
… that he would try, but not promise, to bring the troops home in four years. Four years! U.S. involvement in World War II lasted 3 1/2.
Answers to the question "what next?" were bound to be very similar because there simply aren't very many options left in Iraq — at least not many good ones.
Yet this question — "what next?" — only makes sense in the larger context of another question, "to what end?" And in addressing that question, Kerry clearly stated what seems to be a stark and substantial difference from Bush's position.
Here is what Kerry said in the first presidential debate:
I think a critical component of success in Iraq is being able to convince the Iraqis and the Arab world that the United States doesn't have long-term designs on it.
As I understand it, we're building some 14 military bases there now, and some people say they've got a rather permanent concept to them.
When you guard the oil ministry, but you don't guard the nuclear facilities, the message to a lot of people is maybe, "Wow, maybe they're interested in our oil." …
I will make a flat statement: The United States of America has no long-term designs on staying in Iraq.
Jim Lehrer, the moderator of that first debate, did not take the opportunity to ask Bush if he would make a similar flat statement. And in the months that have followed, I have not heard anyone from the White House press corps ask him to do so either.
Meanwhile, those 14 bases are looking more and more permanent.
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