Abstract

Kerry's Iraq Plan

The article looks at the electioneering of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for the 2004 United States election. When Kerry in a speech refocused his campaign by targeting President George W. Bush's war on Iraq, he pounded Bush for having "misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking." Kerry's "alternative" essentially calls for internationalizing the mess in Iraq by pressuring other nations to participate in an accelerated reconstruction program, to provide more financial assistance and debt relief and to engage in various security functions. With this plan, a collection of steps designed to achieve increments of progress, Kerry and his aides signal that they realize Bush has created a predicament in Iraq with no obvious solution. The Bush camp argues that the President has already adopted much of Kerry's proposal--a criticism rejected by Kerry, who accurately notes that Bush has been unable to get other nations to live up to their commitments under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546, passed last spring. But Kerry's plan--or intention--is to ask U.S. troops and other nations to confront, not run from, Bush's mistake in Iraq in order to prevent Bush's misguided plan, sold on the basis of a phony threat, from bequeathing to the United States and the world what may well be a true threat.