|
| |
December 24, 2006
The Washington Post
By John F. Kerry
There’s something much worse than being accused of
“flip-flopping”: refusing to flip when it’s obvious that your
course of action is a flop.
I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way
how embracing the world’s complexity can be twisted into a crude
political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics.
But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating
civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change
course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous —
it is immoral.
I’d rather explain a change of position any day than look a
parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had
to die so that a broken policy could live.
No one should be looking for vindication in what is happening in
Iraq today. The lesson here is not that some of us were right
about Iraq or that some of us were wrong. The lesson is simply
that we need to change course rapidly rather than perversely use
mistakes already made and lives already given as an excuse to
make more mistakes and lose even more lives.
When young Americans are being killed and maimed, when the
Middle East is on the brink of three civil wars, even the most
vaunted “steadfastness” morphs pretty quickly into stubbornness,
and resolve becomes recklessness. Changing tactics in the face
of changing conditions on the ground, developing new strategies
because the old ones don’t work, is a hell of a lot smarter than
the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again with
the same tragic results.
Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial died after America’s leaders knew that our strategy in
that war was not working. Was then-secretary of defense Robert
McNamara steadfast as he continued to send American troops to
die for a war he knew privately could not be won? History does
not remember his resolve — it remembers his refusal to confront
reality.
Clark Clifford, the man who succeeded McNamara in 1968, was
hand-picked by President Lyndon B. Johnson because he was a
renowned hawk. But the new defense secretary reviewed the
Vietnam policy and concluded that “we cannot realistically
expect to achieve anything more through our military force, and
the time has come to begin to disengage.” By the time he left
office, he had refused to endorse a further military build-up,
supported the halt in our bombing, and urged negotiation and
gradual disengagement. Was Clifford a flip-flopper of historic
proportions, or did he in fact demonstrate the courage of his
convictions?
We cannot afford to waste time being told that admitting
mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies
with an intolerable propaganda victory. We’ve already lost years
being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a
failed policy.
This isn’t a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for
half-way solutions — or warmed-over “new” solutions that our own
experience tells us will only make the problem worse. The Iraq
Study Group tells us that “the situation in Iraq is grave and
deteriorating.” It joins the chorus of experts in and outside of
Baghdad reminding us that there is no military solution to a
political crisis. And yet, over the warnings of former secretary
of state Colin Powell, Gen. John Abizaid and the entire Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Washington is considering a “troop build-up”
option, sending more troops into harm’s way to referee a civil
war.
We have already tried a trimmed-down version of the McCain plan
of indefinitely increasing troop levels. We sent 15,000 more
troops to Baghdad last summer, and today the escalating civil
war is even worse. You could put 100,000 more troops in tomorrow
and you’re only going to add to the number of casualties until
Iraqis sit down together at a bargaining table and compromise.
The barrel of a gun can’t answer the question of how you force
Iraqi nationalism to trump sectarian loyalty.
The only hope for stability lies in pushing Iraqis to forge a
sustainable political agreement on federalism, distributing oil
revenues and neutralizing sectarian militias. And that will only
happen only if we set a deadline to redeploy our troops.
Last May, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the head of U.S. forces in
Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad gave the new Iraqi
government six months. But a deadline with no teeth is only lip
service. How many times do we have to see that Iraqi politicians
only respond only to firm, specific deadlines — a deadline to
transfer authority, deadlines to hold two elections and a
referendum, and a deadline to form a government — before we
understand that it’s time to make it clear that we are leaving
and that we will not sacrifice American lives for the sake of
squabbling Iraqi politicians?
Another case where steadfastness long ago gave way to
stubbornness is our approach to Iraq’s neighbors. Last week in
Damascus, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and I met with
Syrian president Bashiar al-Assad. We were clear about U.S.
expectations for change in his regime’s policies, but we found
potential for cooperation with Syria in averting a disaster in
Iraq — potential that should be put to the test. Washington
can’t remain on the sidelines, stubbornly clinging to a belief
that talking to our enemies rewards hostile regimes.
Conversation is not capitulation. Until recently, it was widely
accepted that good foreign policy demands a willingness to seize
opportunities and change policy as the facts change. That’s
neither flip-flopping nor rudderless diplomacy — it’s strength.
How else could we end up with the famous mantra that “only Nixon
could go to China”? For decades, Richard Nixon built his
reputation as a China hawk. In 1960, he took John Kennedy to
task for being soft on China. He called isolating China a “moral
position” that “flatly rejected cowardly expediency." Then, when
China broke with the Soviet Union during his presidency, he saw
an opportunity to weaken our enemies and make Americans safer.
His 1972 visit to China was a major U.S. diplomatic victory in
the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan was no shape-shifter, either, but after calling
the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” he met repeatedly with its
leaders. When Reagan saw an opportunity for cooperation with
Mikhail Gorbachev, he reached out and tested our enemies’
intentions. History remembers that he backed tough words with
tough decisions — and, yes, that he changed course even as he
remained true to his principles.
President Bush and all of us who grew up in the shadows of World
War II remember Winston Churchill — his grit, his daring, his
resolve. I remember listening to his speeches on a vinyl album
in the pre-iPod era. Two years ago I spoke about Iraq at
Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Churchill had drawn a
line between freedom and fear in his “Iron Curtain” speech. In
preparation, I reread some of the many words that made him
famous. Something in one passage caught my eye. When Churchill
urged, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never
— in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in,” he
added: “except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
|
|
