In writing a 730-word newspaper column, there are inevitably ideas you had that you have to leave out for reasons of space.
In my latest Washington Examiner column, on how Barack Obama has stood apart from America’s four major foreign policy traditions, I wrote the following two sentences. “But Bush’s coalition that went into Iraq included more than 30 nations, most of them democracies. Kerry’s and Obama’s coalition against the Islamic State includes maybe eight, mostly autocracies.”
What I would have liked to add, but didn’t have space for, was a reference to the description, made by Kerry as a presidential candidate in 2004, to Bush’s coalition as a “trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.” That description was recalled by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Marc Thiessen in a blogpost titled “Kerry’s coalition against the Islamic State fails his ‘global test’ ”: the last two words quoting him in one of the presidential debates.
I thought at the time that it was vicious of Kerry, and undermined the credibility of the United States, to characterize Bush’s very large coalition in such negative terms — terms that insulted democracies, including many NATO allies. Thiessen provides a much longer list of those who stood with us and sent ground troops into Iraq in 2003: “the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Australia, Romania, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, Bulgaria, Thailand, El Salvador, Hungary, Singapore, Norway, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mongolia, Latvia, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Albania, New Zealand, Tonga, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, the Philippines, Armenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.” But there is some impulse in American Democrats and liberals that insists on characterizing Bush’s policy in 2002-03 as “unilateral” and regards the disparagement of American allies in time of war as something like a patriotic duty, when it might reasonably be regarded as something very much like the opposite.
The impulse continues to operate today. A Sept. 11, 2014, New York Times story by Mark Landler stated blandly, “Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners.” As Ed Morrissey pointed out in Hot Air, it took the New York Times 12 days to acknowledge this astonishing error in a correction which stated blandly, “The approach Mr. Obama is taking is similar to the one Mr. Bush took; it is not the case that ‘Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners.’ ”
Mark Landler was an adult, 37 years old and a New York Times reporter stationed in Germany, when United States and allied forces entered Iraq in 2003, and presumably his editors were adults then too: All should have known instantly that Landler’s statement was blatantly false. Obviously they have imbibed deeply of the propaganda that Bush was a unilateral cowboy. The Times’ correctors, too, may have imbibed a little. They write that Obama’s approach is similar to Bush’s, with the implication that there are no significant differences between them. But there are.
Bush went into Iraq with many allies, some with substantial military forces or, in the case of small countries, forces of a size significant when compared to their population. Obama went in with few allies, and accounts so far indicate they have made little military contribution. Bush and his administration engaged in months of multilateral negotiations to create their broad coalition. Obama and his administration have apparently been scrambling over a few weeks to create their (so far) much smaller coalition.
I started off on this tangent hoping that some reporter would ask Secretary Kerry to reconcile his contemptuous dismissal of Bush’s broad and deep coalition with his proud descriptions of Obama’s much skimpier coalition. But on second thought I think it’s better for the country if reporters just leave this issue alone. Liberals may not root for America to succeed except when Democratic presidents are in office; conservatives should root for America to succeed even when Democratic presidents are in office.
I just hope that in some corner of his mind Secretary Kerry appreciates how contemptible his words were in 2004 and feels just a tiny bit of gratitude that members of the opposition party are refraining from uttering similar words today.
I note that this blogpost, intended as a footnote to a 730-word column, runs 743 words. No wonder I couldn’t squeeze it in.
