Are There Two Approaches to Iraq?
Let's stipulate, as the lawyers say, that neither Bush nor Kerry really knows much about Iraq: who the leaders or most important groups are, what it would take to win them over, how to tell friends from foes.
Bush seems to stand for fighting on relentlessly, with roughly the troop strength that is there now.
Kerry promises to negotiate with a lot of people, to send more troops if necessary (how?), and to somehow get out sooner than Bush would.
Lots of people think neither one, as president, will have the option of pulling out unless there is a fairly stable government that asks them to leave, or is able to keep control. I still think that if either of them reached the point where they wanted out, Bush would actually have more flexibility to leave, since he has established his toughness. Kerry might find himself stuck like Johnson.
Johnson apparently told people that if he pulled out of Vietnam, American Catholics would raise a stink. "It would make China (in 1949) look like chickenshit."
It's unfortunate that Kerry keeps blurting out that Bush should have given someone--France or the UN--some kind of veto over U.S. action. The statesmanlike thing may have been simply to ... wait. One hopes Kerry means that, but he can't bring himself to say it was up to the president to either unilaterally wait or unilaterally go in.
If I am right, the best argument for invading Iraq was that it was a promising staging area for a democratic movement--i.e. there would be a quick military victory, and a population basically willing to build a new country. I still suspect a lot of people around Bush knew very well there were few or no WMDs, and they didn't care about any connection to Al Qaeda.
They decided they couldn't sell this to the public. They needed to harp about weapons, violated UN resolutions, etc., as an excuse. With the inspectors at work, they couldn't take the risk that Iraq would be found to be free of WMDs, so they rushed in.
Not the smartest move, but arguably noble. From what we have seen, the absence of any knowledge on the ground, or any real planning, is amazing.
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