For Bush

In a recent television discussion between Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens, the protagonists were asked whom they would vote for if they had a ballot in front of them. Sullivan gave an agonised answer:

I'd probably write in McCain-Lieberman. Because I want this war to succeed, I want it to be a bi-partisan war, I want the Democrats to support it; I do not want this war to be fought in order to get Karl Rove a super-majority in various states, and I am appalled by the way in which someone like Karl Rove is using the war for partisan political purposes. It just shows such a low level of civic imagination, put it that way.

Hitchens gave a direct one:

I favour the reelection of the president. But I am, as it seems we've all discovered judging by this discussion anyway, a single-issue voter. I am. And I think we're talking about a single-issue campaign. I don't like John Ashcroft at all, and I think Andrew should have the right to get married.

If I were an American voter and there were a McCain-Lieberman ticket, I should look favourably upon it. But there isn’t, and given the choices that do exist I share Christopher Hitchens’s view in every respect.

I wrote this article in the summer on why a European liberal would wish to see Bush returned to the White House, and have occasionally wondered since then if I had been too harsh on John Kerry in doubting his resolve to fight Islamist totalitarianism with sufficient immoderation. My doubts were allayed this week when considering the views of his running-mate, as reported by Reuters:

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Sunday disputed a White House assertion that it was right to topple Saddam Hussein even if he had no illegal weapons because he posed a future threat.. The North Carolina senator, appearing on several television news programs, said Saddam's intention to eventually gather weapons of mass destruction was one of dozens of such threats. "There are lots of threats waiting to happen all over the world," Edwards said. "That doesn't mean that that justifies invading a country."

Because Edwards doesn’t spell out his objection to regime change (or if he did, the report does not quote it), we have to interpolate it. It appears from that extraordinary phrase about “invading a country” that he is making a point about the sovereignty of states. I can understand why a rational conservative would elevate that principle in his foreign policy, but would expect a different view on the liberal side of the argument. Saddam Hussein’s regime was not Iraq: it was the oppressor of Iraq. When Coalition forces overthrew that regime, they were doing something entirely admirable: protecting a people (or rather, peoples) from arbitrary violence and despotism. Iraqis could not rely on their own government for that protection, because of course their own government was the wielder of that violence. A professed liberal who, in considering that task, is more exercised by the violation of sovereignty or – as Charles Kennedy protested about in the Independent yesterday – the illegality of regime change than the liberty of an oppressed people is a perplexing phenomenon.

Still more perplexing in those complaints is the absence of context. There is no mention by Edwards – or Kennedy – of the fact that the Coalition did not launch war on Saddam Hussein’s regime: Saddam Hussein was the initiator of hostilities. The Gulf War of 1991 was never formally concluded: a ceasefire was put in place contingent on Saddam’s accepting the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 687. He never complied – and compliance, rather than an absence of weaponry, was the explicit requirement – and thereby was in breach of the terms of the ceasefire. This was what made Iraq under Saddam’s despotism a different case from other countries who are in breach of UNSC resolutions and different from other tyrannies. Saddam’s compliance with UNSC resolutions was a prerequisite of his not facing renewed hostilities. After 9/11 no responsible government could allow this continued flouting of international law by a despot with a longstanding record of launching war (three between 1974 and 1990) and supporting terrorism.

Edwards’s definition of responsible government is clearly different:

The first-term senator also noted that of the three countries singled out by Bush as part of an "axis of evil" -- Iraq, North Korea and Iran -- "you know, we invaded the one of those three that doesn't have nuclear weapons."

I assume the aspirant Vice-President is accusing the Bush administration of inconsistency rather than complaining that it has not invaded Iran and North Korea. It is a staggeringly stupid remark, nonetheless. The reason we do not overthrow tyranny in those countries as we did in Iraq is precisely that one possesses nuclear weapons while the other has a substantial military capability that will shortly become nuclear (Iran has been caught with illegally-enriched uranium, in defiance of 'multilateral' and diplomatic approaches): we are too late to stop those developments. [In the preceding sentence as I initially wrote it, I stated Edwards's premise without comment, which caused one reader to assume that I was agreeing with his - presumably rhetorical - assessment of Iran's capabilities; I don't, and have amplified the sentence to make that clear - though Iran is much closer to being a nuclear-armed power than anyone imagined even a few months ago.] We must now practise containment, as we did with the Soviet Union, and hope for the eventual crumbling of those regimes if we demonstrate sufficient resolve. (I believe there are good reasons for expecting that to happen in Iran at least.) In the case of Saddam Hussein, we were not too late; we got to him first, to the immeasurable benefit of the people of Iraq, and us as well.

Because President Bush understands this - indeed because he entertains no doubts about it at all - I hope for his return to the White House.

UPDATE: On an issue about which I know next to nothing but in which he has expertise and many years' personal experience, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (a former speech-writer to Vice-President Walter Mondale) is also indignant about Edwards:

After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable....

UPDATE II: In a fine article in The Sunday Times, Sarah Baxter - former political editor of The New Statesman during Labour's period of extended silliness in the early 1980s, a Labour voter in the UK and a registered Democrat - explains her intention to vote for President Bush. Her observations about the challenger are sharp and apt:

Kerry’s comment that Saddam would “not necessarily” be in power today if Bush had not gone to war made me think back to 1991, when I was at the New Statesman. I was virtually the only person there who thought that the ruler of Iraq’s “republic of fear” should be kicked out of Kuwait. Kerry voted against the 1991 Gulf war, despite his present blather about the United Nations, global tests and international alliances. There could not have been a broader coalition then. Had Kerry been president, Saddam would not only be in power today; he would be richer, more powerful and running Kuwait.

I never imagined that a suave, millionaire candidate for American president, with a realistic prospect of winning, would be at one with the New Statesman in one of its more grungy, ultra-left periods. I thought that era was over — I have changed countries only to find I have stepped through the looking glass.