SHOW: Morning Edition 11:00 AM EST NPR September 23, 2004
Bush and Kerry on Iraq
ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE
REPORTERS: ERIC WESTERVELT
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry this week stepped up his attacks on President Bush's handling of Iraq, saying that the commander in chief lives in a, quote, "fantasy land of spin." The president fired back, charging Kerry with constantly shifting his positions on the war. However, the Kerry and Bush policies on Iraq are far more alike than the heated campaign rhetoric indicates. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT reporting:
The four points of John Kerry's Iraq plan: improve training of Iraqi security, bring in more allies, prioritize reconstruction and move toward elections. One might call Kerry's Iraq plan the `I'll get better results with what obviously needs to be done' plan.
Mr. JON ALTERMAN (Middle East Program, The Center for Strategic and International Studies): There's nothing startlingly innovative. It's a question of who can do it.
WESTERVELT: Jon Alterman is head of the Middle East Program at The Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mr. ALTERMAN: It doesn't strike me that there's a huge amount new. It's not about a whole new approach. It's about being more successful at doing the tasks that a growing number of people, including many in the Bush administration, say are the tasks that need to be done.
WESTERVELT: Take the core of Kerry's plan, which he's hammered home throughout much of the campaign: expanding international help in Iraq. The original coalition of the willing in Iraq has wilted from 46 countries to 32 today, and some of those partners' contributions have proved ineffectual or largely symbolic. Think Moldova's 12 troops. Here's Senator Kerry in an NPR interview aired last night when asked how he would get more allies to help in Iraq.
(Soundbite of "All Things Considered")
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democratic Presidential Nominee): This president has no credibility with those countries because he treated them badly, pushed them aside. His policy has been arrogant. He hasn't listened to them, and there's a lot of anger out there.
WESTERVELT: But beyond pledges of a fresh start with allies, it's not clear how Kerry would enlarge international support. The Bush administration has labored, often with limited success, to expand regional and European assistance in Iraq. Just yesterday, NATO finally agreed on details to send 300 instructors to run a new military training center in Iraq. John Kerry might be able to improve Iraqi security training, but John Pike with GlobalSecurity.org says it won't be hard to improve on the Bush administration's training record.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (GlobalSecurity.org): When you look at how little they have done in getting the Iraqis trained up to do their own security, it's difficult to imagine how they could have done worse.
WESTERVELT: The recruiting, vetting, training and equipping of Iraqi security forces has been bewilderingly slow, but President Bush, speaking at the United Nations this week, insisted that the US and its allies were making significant progress in Iraq.
(Soundbite of United Nations address)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Our coalition is standing beside a growing Iraqi security force.
WESTERVELT: In fact, trained Iraqi forces number just over 93,000, far below the more than 200,000 administration officials had hoped to have by now. Senator Kerry, meantime, tells NPR that his administration would do far better by employing more imagination and creativity.
(Soundbite of "All Things Considered")
Sen. KERRY: Let me give you an example. Put a bunch of Iraqis on a 747 and fly them to another country and train them there and then bring them back. There's stuff that these countries could do that's low risk. But the president hasn't even had the creativity to do those kinds of things.
WESTERVELT: In fact, for nearly a year the US and Jordan have been instructing Iraqi police at a training center in the Jordanian desert, and the Kerry campaign, analysts say, has not offered specifics on how to improve training already being done by Army Lieutenant General David Petraeus. Military analyst Anthony Cordesman adds that getting other nations to help with training is hardly the solution.
Mr. ANTHONY CORDESMAN (Military Analyst): Time and again the aid doesn't flow or it mysteriously turns into loans or it's tied to very impractical ways of helping the country that's the recipient which help the donor. And we've seen that in Afghanistan.
WESTERVELT: Cordesman says while Kerry's Iraq plans lack depth, the senator, he says, at least understands the breadth of the problems there. At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania Wednesday, President Bush downplayed the magnitude of the raging insurgencies in Iraq.
(Soundbite from speech)
Pres. BUSH: It's hard to help a country go from tyranny to elections to peace when there are a handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process, and that's what you're seeing on the TV screens.
WESTERVELT: But many, including US military commanders, say the insurrection in Iraq is far larger than a handful of insurgents. But neither the president nor John Kerry talks about specific strategies to defeat the guerrillas. Toby Dodge of the University of London believes the US invasion breathed new life into a dormant Iraqi Islamic radicalism born of dictatorship and sanctions. That has now mixed with Iraqi nationalism to form the growing insurgencies.
Mr. TOBY DODGE (University of London): What we have is a radical Islamic nationalism in Iraq, and it's mobilizing sections of both the Sunni community and the Shia community, and it's becoming a dominant theme in Iraqi political discourse. Now that's not good for anyone. I mean, it's a very difficult situation, but it's extremely and especially problematic for the United States and for the government of Ayad Allawi.
WESTERVELT: And what about a possible exit strategy, something many voters want articulated? Neither candidate has outlined a plan. President Bush avoids the topic on the stump. He's said only that his goal is to leave when Iraqis are able to secure their own country and not a day longer. John Kerry, meantime, has said that a goal would be to bring US forces home in four years. But what if commanders ask a President Kerry for more US troops?
(Soundbite of "All Things Considered")
Sen. KERRY: I can't hypothesize as to what I'm going to find on January 20th, whether I'm going to find a Lebanon or whether I'm going to find a country that's moving towards an election. That depends on what the president does now.
WESTERVELT: The daily lives of many ordinary Iraqis remain marred by violence, uncertainty and fear, so security will remain the challenge hampering either candidate's plans for change in Iraq. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: The time is 19 minutes past the hour.
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