Kerry Hits, Bush Trips – “Colossal error” & “Shattered alliances”

Binesh Hassanpour

b.hassanpour@utoronto.ca

             Talk of colossal errors, of shattered alliances, of dogmatic certainty and everything else inbetween; the presidential debate was clearly no bore.  Although the outcome of this election will undoubtedly shape international politics for the next four years, the focus of the first seventy of a ninety minute debate, was not the next four years, but the previous four.  Kerry repeatedly attacked Bush for his handling of the war in Iraq, and this became the most contentious issue of the debate.  

In the first of three scheduled presidential debates, the two men’s politics conflicted right from the start.  In fact, there was very little common ground between the two; save the acknowledgement from both that nuclear proliferation was the “single-most serious threat to the national security of the United States.”  Even here, the common ground was tentative – Bush insisted that nuclear weapons are dangerous only in the hands of terrorist networks, whereas Kerry was opposed to nuclear proliferation altogether.   

Either way, for good or ill, this puts the Iranian nuclear issue at the centre of any future American foreign policy.  Iranians abroad and at home undoubtedly have a stake in this election.  Whether the world’s most powerful – or most dangerous – nation (call it what you will) engages the Islamic Republic of Iran with force or diplomacy connotes some serious concern for Iranians.           

There was a sense that Bush showed a fundamental lack of awareness when it came to Iran’s nuclear programme.  He said the United States will “… continue to work with the world to convince the Iranian mullahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.  We've worked very closely with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain, who have been the folks delivering the message to the mullahs that if you expect to be part of the world of nations, get rid of your nuclear programs. The IAEA is involved. There's a special protocol recently been passed that allows for instant inspections. I hope we can do it.  And we've got a good strategy.”  

Leaving aside the lingering grammatical questions, what exactly Bush meant by “good strategy” clearly begs the question: what strategy?

 Further, Kerry took this point up, stating that “regrettably” it was the aforementioned three countries who initiated the move “to curb the nuclear possibilities in Iran”.  Then, in something that became a theme for his plan against nuclear proliferation he shifted the focus to North Korea.

 And for the record, that “special protocol” – officially known as the Additional Protocol – was signed a year ago, which hardly qualifies it as “recent”.

 Kerry, for his part, argued for direct engagement: “I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they [the Islamic Republic of Iran] were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren't willing to work a deal then we could have put sanctions together. The President did nothing.”  

 Whether this is just election-rhetoric or not, it outlines the difference between the candidates on Iran – Kerry seems to have something that resembles a plan, while Bush seemed to sidestep any policy-setting statement.  Whether this makes Kerry any more troubling for Tehran than Bush is, again, a question worth a muse.

 Earlier in the debate, Senator Kerry called the war in Iraq a “colossal error of judgment.”  In a loaded statement, Kerry said “… I will hunt down and kill the terrorists wherever they are.  But we also have to be smart, Jim.  And smart means not diverting our attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking it off to Iraq where the 9/11 commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein.  And where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein.”

 Bush, in a response that would become ridiculously repetitive for the remainder of the debate, stated “My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat. He also said in December of 2003 that anyone who doubts that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein does not have the judgment to be president. I agree with him. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein.”

 What was obviously sidestepped by Bush was the principle of legitimacy that Kerry was trying to get at.  The argument for war was “weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein,” regardless of how grave a threat Saddam was. This exchange, that of legitimacy for war, was repeated several times throughout the debate and each time Kerry had the opportunity to convert it into a decisive knock-out, and each time he failed to capitalize on the fact that Bush actually did lie to the world as to why he sent hundreds of thousands of troops into Iraq.

 Notwithstanding his failure to capitalize on this crucial issue of honesty, Kerry did manage to bring the issue to the fore once every often: “The only building that was guarded when the troops went into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn't guard the nuclear facilities. We didn't guard the foreign office where you might have found information about weapons of mass destruction.”

 If Kerry had repeated this line as many times as Bush repeated “people know where I stand,” Bush would have found it much more difficult to evade the issue of honesty.

 Another point of interest in Thursday night’s debate revolved around the notion of certainty.  The incumbent Bush argued that although tactics within policy are amenable to change, “we never change our beliefs, the strategic beliefs that are necessary to protect this country and the world.”

 With an almost perfect setup, thanks to Bush, Kerry converted the issue into one of dogmatic certainty: “It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. It's another to be certain and be right or be certain and be moving in the right direction or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right… What I worry about with the President is that he's not acknowledging what's on the ground.”

The next presidential debate is to take place on October 8 in St. Louis, Missouri – three days after the vice-presidential debate between Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat John Edwards.  Until then, it seems, Kerry has much to talk about; three national post-debate polls indicated a clear victory for Kerry. 

 Bush, on the other hand, finds himself in a position where his air of confidence is evaporating and he is left without his fierce discipline for driving home simple, yet powerful, messages.  As one veteran Republican strategist put it, on condition of anonymity, in a post-debate comment: “Part of Bush's strength is his simplicity, but in that forum, it became shallowness. That was a high-minded debate and there was a lot more depth to Kerry and his points than to Bush.''

 If the debate polls are indicative of anything, a change in U.S. foreign policy is still possible.