http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4926162/
Where’s Kerry?
If ever there was a moment for the Democrat to come out swinging, this is it
By Eleanor Clift
May 7 - Somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is having the second-best week of his life. American soldiers using Saddam’s torture chambers to abuse and sexually humiliate Iraqis pushes the U.S. presence in Iraq beyond the point where it can be saved.
Capitol Hill is in an uproar, and the White House is panicking. Even Karl Rove makes a rare appearance in print, opining in remarks to an unnamed Bush adviser that it will take a generation for the Arab world to get over the revelations of the last week, and fretting about the perils of premising President Bush’s re-election campaign on national security.
A year after the celebratory landing on the USS Lincoln, the headlines are about torture in Iraq, and this time it’s not Saddam’s fault. The news is jarring for the American people. Bush was supposed to be a competent, can-do guy, and his administration looks like it’s spinning out of control. After hearing that videotapes will soon surface depicting sexually explicit scenes, some Hill aides turned to black humor. Now that the porn industry has shut down in California because of an AIDS scare, it’s picked up and moved to Baghdad, said one aide glumly.
The search for a scapegoat is underway, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the prime target. Only hours before CBS aired pictures of the Baghdad abuse last week, Rumsfeld was on the Hill for a closed-door briefing with senators. He never mentioned the controversy that was about to erupt. Lawmakers are fuming about being kept in the dark. Still, the GOP Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the White House, and it’s up to Rove to set in motion the events that would force Rumsfeld’s resignation. “He’ll get the [Trent] Lott treatment only if it is orchestrated by the White House,” says a Senate Republican.
Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott was stripped of his leadership post when congressional Republicans, encouraged by the White House, scolded him for racist comments made at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. If Rove views Rumsfeld as a political liability, someone prominent on the Hill like the venerable Virginia Sen. John Warner will call for his resignation. Firing Rumsfeld would allow Bush to proclaim a clean break from the past, but it would also be an admission that so much has gone wrong, almost unthinkable for the brash Bush.
If ever there was a moment for John Kerry to come out swinging, this is it. It is the biggest story of the war, and he is essentially silent. The independent voters who will decide this election want someone who is bold, decisive and a leader. They want someone like John McCain, who even though he wears a Republican team shirt has been candid and blunt in assessing the fallout from this and other Bush fiascos. Here’s where Kerry’s vaunted caution comes into play. He held a press conference Wednesday in Los Angeles where he voiced boilerplate outrage and accused the administration of being “slow and inappropriate” in its response. He did call for Rumsfeld’s resignation, but he’s done that before.
This is the language of a diplomat when the situation requires a warrior. There are differences between Kerry and Bush on the war, but most people don’t see them. The administration’s colossal mishandling of Iraq will only boost the Nader vote if Kerry doesn’t sharpen his position. He could demand that the now infamous Abu Ghurayb prison be torn down and that the administration ban the use of mercenary contractors in prison interrogation. He should call on the administration to hold people accountable up the chain of command to the highest levels. Rumsfeld set the tone with his dismissive attitude toward early reports of prisoner abuse, but the persistent failure to honor the guidelines set forth in the Geneva Convention goes all the way to the Oval Office.
Kerry’s decision-making style is that he calls a lot of people for advice rather than just go with his gut. Surely his instinct as a Vietnam vet must be to come out swinging with both fists. But he’s getting conflicting advice, and his tendency is to keep consulting and defer a decision. The campaign doesn’t want to be lured into fighting the race on Bush’s turf, which is national security and foreign policy, but the war looms so large, and Kerry will never be as convincing on the economy as he is on military matters. Because of his privileged life and millionaire wife, he can’t say “I feel your pain” on economic issues the way he can on Iraq.
Never has the United States fallen so far so fast in world opinion. For the same reason Vietnam was such a wrenching experience, the war in Iraq is turning Americans into people we don’t want to be.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Claudia D. Dikinis
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Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous: Carl Sagan
