[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL L'Etat, C'est George W. LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foreign3oct03.story

BUSH VERSUS KERRY

L'Etat, C'est George W.

 October 3, 2004

 George W. Bush has campaigned on a foreign policy that is, for the most
part, appropriate and wise. He has said that this country and its leaders
should show "the modesty of true strength [and] the humility of real
greatness." We take issue with his criticism of what he has called
"nation-building" because we believe that American might can and should be
used sometimes to promote democratic values in other countries. But his is a
vision of America's role in the world that would make us happy and proud.

 If only we could have it. For that was Bush's vision in 2000. He has
governed very differently. Yes, the events of Sept. 11 changed much, if not
everything. But that doesn't justify Bush's dramatic flip-flop (to use his
favorite criticism of his opponent, John F. Kerry). Elected leaders should
be penalized for saying one thing and doing another, even if the result
isn't disastrous. Bush's foreign policy has been disastrous.

 When Bush and Kerry debated Thursday, they focused so narrowly on Iraq that
they didn't really answer this fundamental question: Is the U.S. safer than
it was four years ago? Even allowing that our country was less safe four
years ago than we realized at the time, the answer is no.

 When Bush entered office in January 2001, the United States was not just a
dominant power in the world, it was an unrivaled one. Europe cheered as
U.S.-led airstrikes toppled Slobodan Milosevic's tyranny in the Balkans.
China backed down from threatening Taiwan when President Clinton sent
warships into the region. Around the world, the American model was seen as
the only path to prosperity and freedom.

 Now all that is gone. The military is stretched to the breaking point, with
more than 100,000 troops tied down in Iraq and more than $90 billion having
been spent on behalf of a war that was based on a massive intelligence
failure. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been willfully abandoned
by the Bush administration. North Korea and Iran are constructing nuclear
weapons with impunity. Russia is reaching back to its czarist past as
Vladimir V. Putin tightens his grip on power, while Bush utters feeble
pieties about how he will continue to push for democracy and human rights.
Meanwhile, admiration for the U.S. has been replaced by loathing; even in
moderate Turkey, 59% of the population, according to a recent Pew Research
Center poll, believes that suicide bombings are legitimate in Iraq.

 The mischief began even before 9/11. From the start, Bush's credo was
unilateralism. Even as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was on his way to
visit the White House, Bush gratuitously humiliated him by announcing that
he would not sign the Kyoto treaty limiting greenhouse gases. He made it
clear from the start that he would repudiate the antiballistic missile
treaty with Russia, which he did, in order to pursue the chimera of
strategic defense. The taxpayers will spend more than $10 billion next year
on this highly doubtful missile shield.

 That same unilateralism has suffused the approach to the war on terrorism,
leaving the U.S. to bear the brunt of the war in Iraq and earning it the
odium of the outside world. By simultaneously overextending the military and
running up huge deficits, Bush may have created the kind of overstretch that
has destroyed empires.

 But would Kerry offer a more realistic foreign policy? The former Navy man
regained his sea legs, so to speak, during the debate by proposing, however
vaguely, that the U.S. should begin to think about an exit strategy from
Iraq. His other foreign policy stands are not remarkably different from
Bush's.

 Kerry's biggest virtue is what he is not. In contrast to Bush, who seems to
be living in a fantasy land about Iraq, he realizes that the U.S. has to
patch up its relations with Europe, fight nuclear proliferation and make
choices about where it can and cannot exercise power. Sadly, there is also
some comfort in the thought that, like Bush four years ago, Kerry can change
his mind. Bush is committed. There is value in non-incumbency.

 There is value in incumbency too. Bush is now claiming the virtue of
experience and knowledge of global leaders (he reeled them off in Thursday's
debate). His experience might count for more if it hadn't been our
experience as well.

 One aspect of Bush's incumbency deserves special comment. In the debate and
elsewhere, he has repeated a Kerry line about Iraq being the wrong war in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and has declared that this and similar
criticisms of his policy disqualify Kerry as president because they send a
bad message to, variously, U.S. troops, citizens or allies.

 The message Kerry's criticisms send is that, even in wartime, the United
States is a democracy. The message Bush sends is that he need not defend his
stewardship because criticism is invalid, whatever its merits. L'etat, c'est
moi, as one of those French fellas put it. So much for the modesty of true
strength and the humility of real greatness.


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