After becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry’s statements grew even more pro-war. In early August, after his nomination, Kerry explicitly stated that even had he known about the non-existence of WMD, he still would have voted to grant the president the power to initiate war on Iraq. It is highly significant that while Kerry criticizes the Bush administration for using falsehoods to drive the US into war, he says that he would have supported war even had he known the truth about the non-existent WMD threat. This is a very significant revelation. For if Iraq did not threaten the US, why was it incumbent for the US to go to war? Was it simply an act of outright, unadulterated aggression — and gratuitous aggression, at that?
As newspaper columnist Steve Chapman evaluates Kerry’s war position: “The Iraq war is shaping up to be the greatest American foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. It has killed nearly 1,000 American soldiers and wounded more than 6,000, while tying down 140,000 troops whose numbers are inadequate for the challenge. Its price tag has reached $150 billion, with more costs to come. The war and occupation have alienated our friends, inflamed anti-Americanism in the Arab world and diverted us from the war on Al-Qaeda. If those facts don’t convince Kerry that his vote was a mistake, it’s hard to imagine what would.”
Kerry only differs with the Bush administration on the handling of the war. He promises that if elected he will retain US forces in Iraq, though with much greater international cooperation. It is this emphasis on international cooperation that Kerry and his backers tout as a major policy difference from the Bush administration.
Kerry holds that the US should “transform the situation in Iraq from an American occupation to a global coalition,” and thus “reclaim the best of our historic role overseas and to once again lead the world toward progress and freedom.” In large measure, then, Kerry’s is not a criticism of war and occupation, but rather of America’s “going it alone.” Kerry is quite desirous of having the US intervene on a global scale as long as it would act in concert with other nations.
But a major question here is whether Kerry’s call for international cooperation in war is realistic when applied to Iraq. Are the UN and NATO really willing to be militarily involved in Iraq? As foreign policy commentator Christopher Layne points out: “Multilateralism’s unspoken assumption is that the rest of the world believes that their interests are identical to America’s. If this harmony of interests really existed, conducting a US foreign policy based on multilateralism would be a no-brainer.” But “multilateralism often runs up against a brick wall because the harmony of interests that it presupposes just is not the way things usually are in the real world. Iraq is a great example of this.” In short, expect Kerry’s America to basically carry out its Middle East war agenda by itself — just like Bush’s America. Another contradiction in Kerry’s touting of internationalism, little understood in America, is the fact that the American attack on Iraq itself violated international law, and in so doing undermined the entire international order. Even leading neocon war hawk, Richard Perle admitted in a speech in London in November 2003 that “international law . . . would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone.”
Perle is exactly right in his description of the implications of the American pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Iraq. The war undercut the very international standards for maintaining a stable, peaceful world that internationalists such a Kerry profess to promote. Before a President Kerry could gain support from other nations, he would have to show that the US would abide by the same standards that are applied to all other countries. First and foremost, Kerry would have to acknowledge that the US violated the fundamental tenets of an international order of sovereign nations in its attack on Iraq. But he has so far been unwilling to make such an admission. Without such an acknowledgement, Kerry’s call for international cooperation can be easily interpreted as comparable to the global hegemony pursued by the Bush administration.
While Kerry has the support of many opponents of the war, it is ironic that he has often implied he would pursue a war policy more vigorous and extensive than Bush’s. Kerry’s top national security adviser, Rand Beers, said that Kerry “would not rule out the possibility” of sending additional American troops to Iraq to effectively carry out the occupation. And Kerry has called for increasing the American military by 40,000 troops.
Many of Kerry’s anti-war supporters are of the belief that Kerry’s belligerent language does not predict the policy he would adopt if elected president, but simply represents a political ploy to gain support of some pro-war voters in the swing states — Kerry already having locked up the anti-war vote. They imagine Kerry to be a stealth peace candidate. But the facts point in another direction. Kerry’s influential backers, who are apt to determine the direction of his foreign policy, actually uphold his hard-line policy stance. Influential Democrats have been pushing this liberal justification for US intervention in the Middle East for some time. The major proponents of this military-interventionist liberalism are the “New Democrats.” As British critic of American imperialism, John Pilger writes: “What the New Democrats object to is the Bush gang’s outspokenness — its crude honesty, if you like — in stating its plans openly, and not from behind the usual veil or in the usual specious code of imperial liberalism and its ‘moral authority’. New Democrats of Kerry’s sort are all for the American empire; understandably, they would prefer that those words remained unsaid.”
— Stephen J. Sniegoski holds a Ph.D. in American history, specializing in American foreign policy, and is the author of several historical articles.
