My fantasy Kerry speech...

[gulfcoastliberal]

Here’s the speech I’d like Kerry to give:

One of the great issues in this election is the Iraq war. Why we started it, how it has been carried out, and what we should do now. The American people deserve a clear statement of my views on this issue and I want to provide that tonight. My statements to date have not been entirely clear, and for that, I apologize.

Why did President Bush choose to make war on Iraq? He has given us multiple reasons. First, because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction? When this proved unfounded, it was to rid the world of a brutal dictator. There is no doubt that Saddam was a brutal dictator. But there are many of those and the American people do not feel responsible for ridding the world of all of them – only those that threaten us. So when ridding the world of Saddam didn’t sell as a justification for sending our soldiers to war, the President proposed that we needed to start this war to create a model democracy in the Middle East. Talk about flip-flops. And these are flip-flops, which have affected the life and death of American soldiers.

The President has tried to relate the war on Iraq to the war on terrorism. The 9/11 commission, which President Bush resisted, has settled that issue. This bipartisan Commision – without dissent - found no connection between Saddam and the attack on the World Trade Center. We were attacked by Al Queda and Osama bin Laden, not by Saddam Hussein. Initiating the Iraq war has given Islamic terrorists has created chaos, not democracy, in the heart of the Middle East. This has provided a huge new sanctuary for terrorists who are flocking to Iraq through porous borders. They are finding ready recruits among the millions of young, angry and unemployed youth.

The President and his allies have mocked my statement that I would provide a more nuanced and culturally sensitive foreign policy. By that I meant, for example, that I would distinguish between a brutal Islamic fundamentalist who exports terror and a secular Arab dictator who runs a closed society. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein presented quite different threats, one active and immediate and the other remote and contained. The President’s failure to be sensitive to these differences has cost us dearly. It has also weakened our defense against future terrorist attacks.

How well has the war been conducted? Very poorly, if not disastrously. For some reason it astonished the Defense Secretary that we defeated Saddam’s army so quickly. Therefore, we had no plan in place for post-war Iraq. It is worth recalling that the Defense Department ridiculed Army Chief of Staff Shinseki when, in 2000xx he testified that we would need several hundred thousand troops to occupy post-war Iraq. Had his advice been heeded, we might not have entered this pre-emptive war or we might have done so with the forces needed to do the job successfully.

The unnecessary war in Iraq has weakened our necessary war in Afghanistan. General Tommy Franks told Senator Graham fully four months before the Iraq war started that resources were being withdrawn from Afghanistan for an Iraq war. Because we weakened our Afghanistan forces, the Taliban is regaining strength. NATO, to its credit, has joined us in the Afghan fight. But it is difficult to ask for more support when we have chosen to weaken our Afghanistan forces and when we disparage our long-time French and German allies as belonging to the “old Europe”. It remains much more important to the security of our country that we capture Osama bin Laden than it was to have captured Saddam Hussein. We are now further from capturing bin Laden than we were before the President started the Iraq war.

Some of you night ask, “Didn’t you vote to go to war in Iraq and didn’t you say you’d have voted the same way knowing what you know now”? I did not vote to go to war in Iraq. I voted to give the President authority to make war if the evidence warranted it. This is a huge difference although perhaps still too nuanced for this administration. I said I would do that again because I believe a President, in today’s times, needs that authority to defend the country against urgent and imminent threats. Given the course of events, it is now clear that I should not have voted to give the President that authority because he did not use it wisely or prudently.

What would I do about Iraq if elected President? It is now clear that the Iraqis do not want us in their country. We should therefore set a date in 2005 and get out. We have freed them from a dictator and from here on, they need to save their own country. Neither the United States nor any other outside power can do that for them. Since the Iraqis don’t want us there, the longer we stay, the more anti-American terrorists will be created and the more casualties will be suffered by our brave men and women.

I would deploy some of the forces withdrawn from Iraq in Afghanistan. The security situation there remains shaky. We must strengthen our fight against the terrorists in what is still the largest Al Queda base. In re-assigning troops, I will be guided by the advice of our military rather than by ideological zealots in the Defense Department. Our Iraq efforts have already suffered severe damage from the decisions of military amateurs regarding the number of troops and the types of weapons and armor required.

When I came back from Vietnam and testified before Congress, I asked, “How do you ask someone to be the last person to die for a mistake”? Iraq makes that question just as urgent today.

Thank you, God Bless America and Fuck George Bush.