Democrats = weak on terrorism?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this thread, in which most conservatives/Republicans posting said that Bush was the right choice for the war on terrorism. GoHeels and xtisme had particular provocative posts which cited reasons that they thought Bush has handled the war on terror better than Gore would have. This is not an uncommon viewpoint – everyone from the fairly moderate Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds on right has voiced this view recently.

GoHeels’s post cited two things:

  1. Kerry would negotiate with the mullahs in Iran.
  2. Kerry would negotiate with North Korea.

IMHO, these are two big failings of the Bush administration and I hope that Kerry, if he wins, does act along these lines. Let me address #2 first. The only threat NK has to us is if they get nuclear weapons. When Bush came in, he stopped negotiations for a variety of reasons. One could speculate that he didn’t want to talk with a regime that he considered “evil,” or that he wanted NK as a “rogue state” to sell his National Missile Defense thing, which seemed to be the backbone of his defense plans before 9/11. Since 9/11, NK has been a dangerous distraction, and it has only gotten worse – now they apparently have nukes or are very close to having them. To fight Islamic extremism, we need to clear the table of distractions. NK is a very dangerous and more volatile distraction with every month we skip negotiations.

#1 is a little more difficult, because it is a big source of the precise Islamic extremism with which we are most worried. I don’t think the cite given by GoHeels really supports this – it seems like Kerry gave the Tehran Times a rather loosely worded answer that actually says very little. But, let’s assume that it is true for debate. First, I wounder if he would feel the same way after this week’s elections. I think our Cuba policy has proven one thing – long term economic sanctions erected by the US alone (and ignored by the rest of the world) don’t work towards regime change. OTOH, long term economic sanctions under the auspicies of a UN agreement do seem to work. Witness South Africa. Also, witness the effectiveness in which they hamstrung Saddam and his military machine.

It can be argued that Clinton mishandled the war against al-Qaeda. What this ignores is that before 9/11, he had no mandate for a war on terror. The first WTC bombing didn’t give it, the USS Cole and the African Embassy bombings didn’t. Each of his military actions was accompanied by opposition by the Republican party, often with cries of “wagging the dog” and criticisms of using US forces for peace keeping and nation building. We of course all wish that he could have acted sooner, perhaps maybe preventing 9/11, or taking out the Taliban. But it was an impossibility. Think of the reaction to his moves in Kosovo, and that was a multilateral campaign to stop ethnic cleansing. The US didn’t even put many troops on the ground, and he was vilified for it.

I personally think Gore would have had a very similar reaction to 9/11 than Bush did. It was a polarizing, focusing event. We would have gone after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden with everything we had. We would have probably done so with more of an international backing. I think we would still have had the worldwide mandate which accompanied 9/11. This would have stemmed in part from brokering continuing peace talks (and hopefully some kind of settlement) in Israel and Palestine. I think we would have had much more latitude for rooting out extremist groups in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere because of this. I think that Iraq would have been put on a back burner, and there would be much overhaul and US-led restructuring of UN aid agencies and NGOs to foster democracy and freedoms throughout the Middle East. Call me naive, it is only the scenario of which I dream.

I think if the elections had happened differently, we would have been sitting around here counting our lucky stars that we hadn’t elected Bush, what with all of his talk against use of American troops in nation building and peace keeping operations and his ambivalence towards the UN.

2

I was about to raise the same question in that thread, edwino. It seems to me the whole notion of “a Democrat would be useless in the war against terrorism” is based on little more than stereotyping. “Gore would have been useless against Afghanistan” is one example; it’s all hypothetical theorizing, with no facts to support it.

And when you get down to it, what has George W. Bush done in the war on terror that makes him look like the ideal candidate over the alternatives? Ever since 9/11, we’ve had:
[ul]
[li]War in Afghanistan against the Taliban. A justified repsonse to the attacks. Can’t imagine any reasonable complaints against this, though I think anyone who was President at the time would have done the same thing.[/li][li]Premature withdrawl of troops from Afghanistan/Abandoning the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Huh? Aside from Bush’s rush to go to Iraq, this makes no sense whatsoever.[/li][li]Alienating allies. Another huh? Fighting terror requires lots of international cooperation, so why is Bush pissing off everyone else while banging the drums for Iraq? Frankly, after “old Europe”, “Freedom Fries,” and “the UN is irrelevant,” I almost expected the rest of the world to tell us to bugger off and fight our own war against terrorists.[/li][li]Iraq. Had absolutely nothing to do with the war on terror, aside from being an incentive for more terrorists to sign up. Anyone who still believes Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 or al Qaeda is reading the wrong message board.[/li][li]North Korea. Diplomacy is good, especially against someone who’s actually got nuclear arms. But the comparison between North Korea and Iraq is a clear warning sign to terrorists worldwide – “Get your WMDs now and keep the Americans at bay!”[/li][/ul]

So, given the dismal effort Bush has done in the war on terror, where are we getting the notion that a Democratic successor would be worse? There’s nowhere to go but up…

3

We know that Clinton had developed plans for Al-Qaeda, and that the plans were passed on to the Bush administration. We also know that Bush didn’t do anything about Al-Qaeda until after 9/11. Why? Plausible explanation:

  • Texas oil guys get really pissed at Clinton for sending cruise missiles into Afghanistan in 1998, thereby fucking up negotiations with the Taliban over the construction of the Unocal pipeline through Afghanistan.

  • Number one priority of Bush/Cheney upon gaining office is to sort out the oil situation in the middle east. We know from O’Neill about the Iraq invasion plans being on the agenda from day one. What’s still being hidden is the full details of the negotiations that were started by Bush and Co with the Taliban. According to the administration, those negotiations were merely polite requests to stop growing opium and to stop harboring Al-Quaeda. Reading between the lines, though, the reason why the administration was being so polite in the first place was because they wanted the pipeline to go ahead.

  • On 9/11, they realised that “Plan A” wasn’t working too well, so they switched to the “Plan B” that they had probably already worked out. “Plan B” involved invading Afghanistan, installing someone friendly as el-Presidente, say, ex-Unocal employee Hamid Karzai, and then going ahead and building the pipeline.

4

edwino,

Just to clarify my stance, I object to Kerry favoring BILATERAL negotiations with North Korea, which would amount to, IMHO, caving in to the NK’s position and negotiating from a position of weakness. I do support the current six-way talks as the best (or more precisely, least worst) opportunity to break the current impasse on terms somewhat favorable to the US and its allies.

The problem to me, it seems, is that after the collapse of the Agreed Framework (bilateral negotiations b/t the US and NK in 1994) showed that without verifiable, complete, and irreversible inspectors to make sure the NKs aren’t cheating, any agreement made with the NKs is pointless. And the NKs aren’t going to agree to this. Ever. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

(I have to go to work now, so I can’t finish this post - but I’ll come back to Iran).

5

Speaking as a registered Republican, I’d say that Bush has miserably mismanaged and quite horribly botched the fight against terrorism. He started out fairly well, by not merely launching a missile to blow up a tent and hit a camel in the butt. But then he completely lost touch with reality and went out into cloud-cuckoo land.

There was progress in Afghanistan, but then Bush started doing things that any reasonable person would consider to be at very best to just be a distraction from the fight against terrorism. At worst, one sometimes has to wonder if there hasn’t been an attempt to actively sabotage the fight against terrorism by the Bush administration.

6

To add further credence to this: Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline - Thursday, December 4, 1997.

7

I agree that Afghanistan was and is a major failing. Maybe George Bush will get lucky and reforming Taliban and Osama’s crowd won’t successfuly execute yet another attack. But it’s still irresponsible to have committed so many more resources to something that, while important, wasn’t half as urgent as actually tracking down the major players in 9/11. It’s clear to anyone but a die-hard apologist that, despite all assertions to the contrary, nowhere near the same level of attention and manpower has been paid to getting Osama and Omar as has been paid to getting Saddam. I don’t think getting Saddam was a bad thing. But it wasn’t anywhere near as urgent, and that baseless rush to do it had clear negative consequences.

Well, it also would have helped if we had kept up with our end of the bargain too.

8

Bush has not been tough on terror. He has been tough on immigrants (except those that he wants to throw bones at for election purposes). He has imposed intrusions into privacy rights that have little real effect on terror. He has distracted from the failure to capture Osama with a war in Iraq which really had nothing to do with terror but which is turning into a recruitment tool for Al Qeaeda.

Would unnamed Democrat have done much better? A little different, maybe a little better but not much. The immediate response to 9/11 would have been likely the same. More focus would have persisted on Osama and a little less on Iraq. The same contingencies for Iraq would have been in place (and apparently were planned under Clinton) but there would not have been the urgency to act alone. More time would have been given to have the UN officially bless the action. A bit more multilateral. Maybe a bit more time would have been spent on what to do once we were in there.

Maybe a little better at root causes. Not much. Root causes means getting oppressive Arab regeimes to democratize yet not turn into Islamic theocracies. Somehow getting Arab societies to be join the secular world and home grow science and technology with native educational institutions and opportunities to use that education. Big order and dangers abound on the road to achieving it.

9

Thank you all for your replies. Lying in bed last night, I realized that I forgot to frame the OP as a debate…

Being a realist, I would like to propose that many of restrictions in liberty that 9/11 brought us would have been pretty similar under Gore. There was absolutely no way for our country not to go completely reactionary after those events. I envision similar things to the Patriot Act, similar imprisonments and extended detainments. While I think that the Patriot Act has gone too far, I would also say that the amount of liberty decreased for most Americans (not of Muslim or Arab extraction) has been relatively minimal. This explains why there has not been more public outcry of Gitmo or the Jose Padilla stuff.

We have been through the Gore/Bush handling of the war on terror thought exercise in many other threads., though. I would like to focus on Kerry, mostly because Edwards is pretty much a blank slate and Kucinich and Sharpton are ignoreable. I’m no Kerry fan but I intend on voting for him (or another Democrat). I’m not 100% sold, though. I wouldn’t vote for Bush (due to his leanings on science, health care, the economy, and his kowtowing to the religious right), but I may stay home on election day if he doesn’t capture my attention. I live in Texas so it’s not as if my vote really counts.

On his website, Kerry calls for a new internationalism. Does anyone know how he wants to do this? Through the UN? IMHO the UN is a flawed institution and it could do with some reforms. Has he proposed any? I see nothing about how he would change our relationship with Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or any other problem country, except for in general terms with non-proliferation stuff and the Code of Conduct Arms Transfer Act, which would apparently deny US military assistance to any undemocratic country. I think this is a great first step, but needs to be followed with active pro-democracy initiatives.

Conservatives – are there things that Bush is doing in the war on terror that you have evidence that Kerry would not do? Are there things that Kerry would do that would actively increase our chances of being attacked again?

Granted, these are all touchy issues and no candidate can be expected to come up with a highly detailed, overarching plan in February. I mean, our current administration certainly doesn’t seem to have such a plan, I don’t see why we should require it of a candidate (besides the fact that it would be really nice).

10

Well, since you thought my post was provocative and helped you form this thing (I think you misread what I was saying personally), maybe you could answer the basic question that I was responding to in that other thread?

Basically, Quint Essence said this:

To which I responded essentially, how (Ok, I really said they had less chance than me winning a million dollars in the lottery)? Whats Kerry’s big plan to do something on this scale? How realistic is it? It seems like bullshit to me. Getting to and addressing the root causes of terrorism? This wasn’t a slam at the democrats…its a slam at someones political fantasies. I don’t think EITHER party has a chance of doing something on this scale. Am I wrong? If so, thats fine…let me see the grand plans for addressing the root causes of terrorism from ANY candidate.

-XT

11

Very similar to my concerns. I also think the whole “axis of evil” speech was very badly judged. A classic case of making a speech for internal comsumption, without considering the international consequences. It was perfect propaganda for the Iraqi, Iranian & North Korean regimes. They could ignore the fact that the speech was aimed at the regimes themselves, and say to their people “the Americans hate us”.

12

The truth can probably be said for any large international institution, or even any large nation.

Seems like a no-brainer to me: if you genuinely want to reduce/eliminate (not likely) terrorism worldwide, then you have to work in an international matter. The United States can’t do everything by itself, and working with the rest of the world on a nation-by-nation basis is grossly inefficient. Despite its warts, the UN is the best international body we’ve got now, and it still has enough gravitas with the rest of the world that a UN-supported “war on terror” would be easier to wage than one without UN backing.

Sure, the UN isn’t perfect. But then, who is? For the US to ding the UN brings to mind the adage about stones and glass houses…

13

Kerry’s record on defense and terrorism speaks for itself. I don’t blame people for wanting to dredge up crap about Afghanistan that has been debunked on more than a few occasions.

Anyway, here’s Kerry’s policy No reason for everyone to grope around in the dark.

It’s Clinton II – Use law enforcement, pretend like the French, Germans, Luxemburgers, and Belgians are our allies (despite their best efforts to tell us that we are the evil hyperpower – for decades), and some new bureaucracy where the CIA Director will be a “Czar.”

Translation: stock up on duct tape.

14

Of course you have evidence that Bush’s duct tape directives have actually saved American lives? We never heard that sort of scaremongering under Clinton.

15

The Democrats in general don’t seem to have a weak record in dealing with terrorism. FDR’s response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and JFK’s response to the Soviet Union during the crisis in in October of 1962 come to mind. And yet one was handled with a declaration of war and the other with behind the scenes negotiation.

What is it that has caused some people to think that Kerry would not be able to handle a crisis well?

16

Could you please point me toward one of these debunkings? I’ve heard this kind of stuff since Clinton was in office. I’ve not seen any good discussion of it though.

Did we read the same article?

In the article I read, there’re zero instances of the words French, Germans, Luxemburgers, Belgians and czar. There’s no mention of any new bureaucracy. Furthermore, there’s no mention of the use of law enforcement for fighting terrorism or for anything.
Particularly contrary to your assertion about the use of law enforcement is this paragraph:

Maybe you had a few browser windows open and accidentallly linked to a completely different article than the one you’re talking about. I’ve made that mistake before.

17

Ah, those would be the French and Germans who invoked NATO’s Article 5 and sent troops to Afghanistan when the US was attacked ? If those relations have coooled off lately, it just might have something to do with the US administration trying to cash in on the 9/11 goodwill and getting those same countries to underwrite the Iraq invasion based on some cockamamie story about WMD and Iraq-Al Queda cooperation.

18

The oil pipeline story ended with the Taliban agreeing to a pipeline but Unocal backing out based on insecurity and feminist issues.

My basic problem with all these “steal the oil” arguments – around since Gulf War I, and long before – is that they NEVER pan out. If we wanted Iraq’s oil, we would have gone into Baghdad in 1991, set up a brutal colonial fiefdom, and told the UN to “fuck off.”

OR, right after Sept. 11, 2001, just taken over Saudi Arabia. That would have been easy to justify and who’s going to stop the “imperial hyperpower” anyway?

If one is slightly realistic about US military involvment, the conclusion one would draw from recent interventions is that our primary goal is protecting Muslims from themselves and others. That applies with equal force to the last several administrations. We always try to work through the corrupt UN because our idealism contends very well with our realism, which we hate. Realism means acknowledging that the rest of the world can’t see the forest for the trees.

But, no, us idealistic Americans, with our eternal guilt complex, keep listening to the UN, Europeans, Leftists, and their conspiracy theories.

FACTS: The Europeans cashed in on Iraq’s oil while Saddam (the illegitimate leader) was in power. The Europeans violated the sanctions, UN Oil-For-Bribery Program, and ignored their own resolutions regarding Iraq. All while proliferating nuclear technology to the Third World.

That’s a REAL scandal, but it might offend our enem… allies.

19

Oh, I never advocated doing things without international backing or without the UN. I just said that the UN had flaws, and if Bush was smart, he would have used 9/11 impetus to point out those flaws and reform the UN. I don’t particularly like the General Assembly; I’m quite fond of Israel and I think it is lunacy how they get beat around by it. I think that large voting blocs in the GA have turned it into a total farce similar to a high school popularity contest. I still like the Security Council, I still like the work the UN has done in places like East Timor, I still like international monitoring and UNICEF and a lot of other things. But the UN will never be a true international body capable of acting without a legitimate reorganization/restructuring/opposition force to the GA.

I would like to see NATO used more for these purposes. In fact, I kind of like the idea of an expanded NATO as kind of a “Justice League” for world peace. Perhaps incorporate SEATO (probably without Pakistan) and other democracies of the world. I would like to see it with a primary purpose of antiterrorism, peacekeeping, and nation building. I would like to see a rapidly deployable police unit similarly to the Gendarmerie, as well as incorporated aid organizations which could provide targeted aid to areas under intervention. Part of this would be political reeducation and daresay pro-Western propoganda. It sounds ominous, but it is the only way that we will ever stabilize the part of the world that is of the most threat to us right now.

20

When did “Kerry” and “The Democratic Party” become synonyms? I thought this thread was for the purpose of discussing why Democrats generally are perceived as weak on defense and handling terrorism. What Kerry would or wouldn’t do isn’t even germane, since it’s all speculation and election year policy pronouncements. What did Gore do when he was veep? What did Clinton do? Carter? Johnson? JFK? What’s been the Democratic parties platform on terrorism, and how have Democratic congressmen and senators tended to vote?