Debate two: town hall

Once again, post-debate I declare a Bush victory and the MSM conspires against me. Bastards. If you didn't watch, judge for yourself.

I was happy with Lehrer in the first debate, but some folks thought he was lackluster. To everyone's delight, Ifill served up harballs in the VP debate, but I thought she only got 7 out of 10 across the plate. This time around, I think everyone's happy - Charles Gibson put in a decent night's work as moderator, and the questions selected were great. I'll grant you that the town hall format may be harder to screw up, but still - go Charles!

We had more note scribling from Kerry, but usually with much less intensity than in debate #1. I only want to talk about two questions this time, and once again, my amusement starts at question #1. Asked essentially "John kerry, art thou wishy-washy?", we're fed this -

KERRY: Cheryl, the president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception. [I'm already lost - you're only wishy-washy because you quote DU slogans?] And the result is that you've been bombarded with advertisements suggesting that I've changed a position on this or that or the other.

Now, the three things they try to say I've changed position on are [First one] the Patriot Act; I haven't. I support it. I just don't like the way John Ashcroft has applied it, and we're going to change a few things. [The Attorney General applies laws as they're written; you're the legislator, remember? You're the one (well, one of 99) who voted to hand him that law] The chairman of the Republican Party thinks we ought to change a few things

[Second one] No Child Left Behind Act, I voted for it. I support it. I support the goals. But the president has underfunded it by $28 billion. Right here in St. Louis, you've laid off 350 teachers. You're 150 -- excuse me, I think it's a little more, about $100 million shy of what you ought to be under the No Child Left Behind Act to help your education system here. [100 is not a little more than 150. It's not even a lot more] So I complain about that. I've argued that we should fully funded it. The president says I've changed my mind. I haven't changed my mind: I'm going to fully fund it.

So these are the differences. Now, the president has presided over an economy where we've lost 1.6 million jobs. The first president in 72 years to lose jobs. I have a plan to put people back to work. That's not wishy- washy. [It's also not something anyone says you changed positions on - you still owe us one] I'm going to close the loopholes that actually encourage companies to go overseas. The president wants to keep them open. I think I'm right. I think he's wrong.

I'm going to give you a tax cut. The president gave the top 1 percent of income-earners in America, got $89 billion last year, more than the 80 percent of people who earn $100,000 or less all put together. I think that's wrong. That's not wishy-washy, and that's what I'm fighting for, you. [No one says you changed positions here either - they say you will change positions on it]

So he came up one item short. Not a problem - Bush helps him out.

BUSH: You know, for a while he was a strong supporter of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He saw the wisdom -- until the Democrat primary came along and Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate, began to gain on him, and he changed positions. I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics.

He just brought up the tax cut. You remember we increased that child credit by $1,000, reduced the marriage penalty, created a 10 percent tax bracket for the lower-income Americans. That's right at the middle class. He voted against it. And yet he tells you he's for a middle-class tax cut.

In question #2, Bush FINALLY lays to rest the "but other countries have WMD too!" canard, but it took a direct question about Iraq and the Duelfer report that seemed designed to make him do just that in order to make it happen. He laid out the relevance of WMD concisely, if not comprehensively, but it was too little too late - the prevarication has already become seated firmly in the public debate. Then Kerry gets a chance to answer...

The world is more dangerous today. The world is more dangerous today because the president didn't make the right judgments.

Now, the president wishes that I had changed my mind. He wants you to believe that because he can't come here and tell you that he's created new jobs for America. He's lost jobs. [In Iraq?]

He can't come here and tell you that he's created health care for Americans because, what, we've got 5 million Americans who have lost their health care, 96,000 of them right here in Missouri. [Wha- was that in the Duelfer report..?]

He can't come here and tell you that he's left no child behind because he didn't fund no child left behind. [Um... did you even hear the question?]

So what does he do? He's trying to attack me. He wants you to believe that I can't be president. And he's trying to make you believe it because he wants you to think I change my mind.

[John - the question was "Do you sincerely believe this to be a reasonable justification for invasion when this statement applies to so many other countries, including North Korea?" Thanks.]

Well, let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat. Believed it in 1998 when Clinton was president. I wanted to give Clinton the power to use force if necessary.

But I would have used that force wisely, I would have used that authority wisely [more wisely than you used your seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, one would hope], not rushed to war without a plan to win the peace. I would have brought our allies to our side. I would have fought to make certain our troops had everybody possible to help them win the mission. This president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside. And Iran now is more dangerous, and so is North Korea, with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball, off of Osama bin Laden.

He finally found the topic, but it was like watching him try to find car keys blindfolded. And bin Laden is not the ball, but I suppose I should be thankful that Kerry seems aware that he has something to do with the war on terror. [If bin Laden were the ball, Kerry would have no argument at all]

I'm not going to address most of the debate - plenty of other bloggers already have (by 1:00 am Allah already had an impressive roundup posted), and I'm kind of eager too see what they had to say - but I really want to address one thing that came out early in the foreign policy portion. The rebuttals in this question are important in my mind - they related directly to the use of sanctions in foreign policy.

Sanctions do not work. Not in any absolute, across-the-board, one-size-fits-all-nations sense. Sanctions make sense in a Cold War-era doctrine of containment. They are not effective in altering the behavior or character of one individual despotic country - they're a tool that assists in containing an overall alignment or coalition of countries vis a vis another by weakening elements of it. Sanctions have accomplished no goal in Cuba, Iran, or North Korea other than keeping them weakened - they have not removed the problems that makes strength undesirable. Sanctions caused more problems than they solved in Iraq, and they will accomplish nothing in Sudan when we reach that point. They are incapable of solving any sort of problems on a nation-by-nation basis if that nation lacks any genuinely democratic element. They simply don't, and never have.

However, there are people who do not understand sanctions for what they are, what they can and can't do. Typically, people in this camp appear to view sanctions as a punitive measure - if you send Sudan to it's room, it's feelings will be hurt and it will decide to behave. Their answer to any bad element is slapping on sanctions, and the past performance of sanctions just never seems to penetrate their understanding. Aim sanctions at a regime, the regime ducks and the sanctions hit the people behind them - this is the reality they don't see. Considering this, look over the rebuttals.

BUSH: My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves. That's the kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, "Let's keep it at the United Nations and hope things go well." Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies. Sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein.

KERRY: The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein, it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction. And, Mr. President, just yesterday the Duelfer report told you and the whole world they worked. He didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Mr. President. That was the objective. And if we'd used smart diplomacy, we could have saved $200 billion and an invasion of Iraq. And right now, Osama bin Laden might be in jail or dead. That's the war against terror.

Not only is Kerry stressing yet again that bin Laden is somehow "the ball", but his grasp of the intent and accomplishments of the Iraq sanctions, as demonstrated here and elsewhere, could charitably be called questionable.

If you consider Kerry to be discussing only the direct goal of sanctions, he is arguably correct in stating that the goal of sanctions was not to dislodge Saddam, but his contention that the goal of sanctions was to remove WMD is flatly wrong. The direct goal of sanctions was an evolving one; first, to compel Saddam to leave Kuwait, then to force compliance with Geneva prohibitions on chem/bio agents, and then to pressure compliance with the cease-fire agreement which adopted the Geneva compliance as one of its terms. Saddam had committed to compliance within 90 days. Not 10 years, 12 years, 13, 15, 20 years - 90 days. Inasmuch as compliance never came, the sanctions could fairly be said to have failed this goal in the very first year.

If you consider Kerry to be discussing the goal of the broader, overall policy position that sanctions were just one component of, he's wrong again. Since sanctions were left in place to coerce cease-fire compliance -- which was not by any stretch of imagination "working", incidentally -- then the overall goal of sanctions must be understood to be the goal of the cease-fire agreement itself.

Removing Saddam's WMD stockpiles was a milestone in this policy, not an endgame (much as capturing bin Laden is an objective in the WoT, but not the purpose of the endeavor). The overarching intent of the cease-fire agreement was to remove the menace that Saddam represented. The problem was not that he had weapons, the problem was that he excercised no restraint in using them.

This required not just getting rid of weapons themselves, but getting rid of any intent to regain them. The first aim of the policy then, as it stood, was to mollify Saddam. The Duelfer report is clear on scoring this - that effort failed. Sanctions did not change the character of the man, of whom the Duelfer summary says "Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone". It was laughable to think that they ever could have, but only to those who do not regard sanctions as being an effective puntive measure. As the cat-and-mouse buggery of the inspections regime became Saddam's clear intention, it also became clear that the first objective of the policy had proven impossible - time for plan B.

The next aim of the policy was to be dislodging him. To the ends of this proposition, the sanctions were discussed, somewhat more credibly, as a tool for dislodging him. The gist of this was that the sanctions would keep the regime weakened, therefore overthrowable by the people of Iraq. The flaw in this model is that it required its target not to be a brutal and oppressive tyrant who would murder every hint of opposition by any means available, and who had international cooperation in undermining the sanctions themselves. Other than that, the theory seeems sound. However, this objective of dislodging Saddam via sanctions has to be declared a failure.

Let's revist those rebuttals one more time -

BUSH: My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves. That's the kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, "Let's keep it at the United Nations and hope things go well." Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies. Sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein.

KERRY: The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein, it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction. And, Mr. President, just yesterday the Duelfer report told you and the whole world they worked. He didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Mr. President. That was the objective. And if we'd used smart diplomacy, we could have saved $200 billion and an invasion of Iraq. And right now, Osama bin Laden might be in jail or dead. That's the war against terror.

The sanctions could only -- agruably -- be considered to have been working if they were regarded as an end in themselves, not as one component of an overall policy. Were sanctions preventing Saddam from making as much money as he wanted? Yes. Did they stop him from fully reconstituting his military? Mostly. Did they prevent him from rebuilding his WMD stockpiles? Apparently. Did they remove his intent to be a menace in the region and abroad? No. The policy was a perennial failure.

Once again, I have to say that John Kerry has demonstrated a failure to grasp the machinery of foreign policy to a degree that scares me. I am genuinely alarmed at the idea of placing the power to impose sanctions into the hands of a man who does not understand them. He has been in the Senate since before the first Gulf war, but he still does not today excercise a working concept of the policy. I would not let an ape drive a car - we must not let John drive our policy.


Update: I can't let this go without annointing a "Quote of the Debate"

KERRY: And I believe if we have the option, which scientists tell us we do, of curing Parkinson's, curing diabetes, curing, you know, some kind of a, you know, paraplegic or quadriplegic or, you know, a spinal cord injury, anything, that's the nature of the human spirit.

I, like, um, you know, uh - totally! Or something. You tell that Chimplinator!