Kerry rekindles his anger over Iraq

Kerry rekindles his anger over Iraq

Friday, April 14, 2006

By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST

With its typical tendency to demean war critics, the Fox News Channel ran a line on the TV screen as it reported on Sen. John Kerry's proposal that Iraqi leaders be told to get a government together or the United States will get its troops out.

"CUT AND RUN?" the question asked, borrowing a long-ago line used by the Johnson and Nixon administrations to demonize Vietnam War doubters.

Over breakfast here on Wednesday morning, the Massachusetts senator was not about to turn the other cheek.

"We are cutting and running from the truth," Kerry said. "We are cutting and running from diplomacy. We are cutting and running from providing our troops with the arms and materiel they need."

After being hit by charges two years ago that he was wishy-washy on the war, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee seems rekindled in the sense of outrage that once brought him to prominence with Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

One spark has been his rereading of the memoirs of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara confessed to his private misgivings about the Vietnam War ("We were terribly, terribly wrong!") that he waged, defended and advocated from 1965 to 1968.

In McNamara's admission, the United States tried to achieve a military outcome in Vietnam without a political foundation.

"It is exactly the situation in Iraq today," Kerry said. "The military cannot, under any circumstances, produce the outcome we want."

"Our troops have done their job," he added. "For our kids to come back to Walter Reed Hospital without an arm or a leg, because Iraqi politicians can't compromise, is inexcusable."

He noted that half of the names on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., were added after top Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger started privately talking about the U.S. pulling out after a "decent interval."

"I'm not going to be a senator who creates the next 'Iraq Wall' because we can't face reality," Kerry said.

"If Iraqis want to fight a civil war, there's nothing we can do about it," he added.

In an influential book, "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam fixed blame for Vietnam on a cocky liberal intelligentsia of the time who felt that anything -- even a war -- could be planned, programmed and managed.

Kerry sees the 21st century quagmire in Iraq as the product of a headstrong, entrenched and equally insular conservative elite in the nation's capital.

"I'll tell you what I think: It's quite personal," Kerry said. "A bunch of people who never served in the military or Vietnam -- and drew the wrong lessons from the war -- brought with them an ideological bent on the world's problems."

He singled out Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle -- senior officials and advisers to a Defense Department that took over reins of postwar management in Iraq from the State Department.

Wolfowitz is now president of the World Bank, the same post to which President Johnson exiled McNamara in 1968.

"They predicted parades, and flowers strewn at the feet of our soldiers," Kerry said. "They were all ignoring the lessons of history, ancient and modern."

What would Kerry do? He would apply a variation of an old axiom: There's nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind.

He would set a May 15 date to begin a U.S. withdrawal, and then convene all of Iraq's players -- as well as Middle East governments -- in one place and put them under intense pressure.

The model would be the Dayton Accords, the peace agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina worked out in 1995 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Participants in and enablers of Yugoslavia's civil war were isolated and made to deal. The accord ended 3 1/2 years of war in Bosnia.

Even if an Iraq accord were reached, Kerry would withdraw U.S. troops by year's end. U.S. airpower would be used to protect such groups as the Kurds, who have built a national life under the U.S. occupation.

Does this sound like a presidential candidate?

Yes, and one whose redeployment-from-Iraq stance is to the left of the perceived front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Kerry was here to raise money for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. He also squeezed in a fund-raiser for his own political action committee, and a meeting with politically engaged Microsoft employees.

The culture of his party is, however, working against Kerry.

A bevy of Republicans -- Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr. and Bob Dole -- have won their party's nomination on the second or even third try. Democrats seem predisposed to dump on their past nominees and turn to new faces.

Two of the Democrats' new faces are due soon in Seattle.

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will be here on April 24. Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin -- whose censure resolution against President Bush has made him the darling of the party left -- will campaign for Cantwell on May 21.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who headed Kerry's 2004 campaign in the state, sternly advises visiting White House aspirants to keep eyes on an immediate prize -- this year's midterm elections and Democrats' bid to recapture Congress.

"A year, in this environment, is a lifetime," joked Smith. He's staying uncommitted.