Kerry's bad idea, less poorly executed

Recent comments by Sen. John Kerry are sure to warm the hearts of Ralph Nader's campaign and further tax the mental contortions of much of the ABB crowd. The Democratic presidential nominee said that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda.

"Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" he said. "Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?"

"I believe if you do the kind of alliance-building that is available to us that it is appropriate to have a goal of reducing our troops over that period of time," he said. "Obviously, we have to see how events unfold. The measurement has to be, as I've said all along, the stability of Iraq, the ability to have the elections, and the training and transformation of the Iraqi security force itself."

It's true that a truly multilateral intervention would've made for a less messy occupation. It would've inflamed anti-Americanism to a less significant degree. It would've been less counterproductive. But it still would've been unjustified.

And that's the crux of the matter. Iraq was a bad idea, poorly executed. Kerry is arguing for a bad idea, less poorly executed.

At the current time, that's the best we can hope for: the least disastrous of a several bad options.

But it's another thing entirely to argue that he still would've supported the Conquest even if he'd known (assuming he didn't really know it in his heart) that Iraq posed no real threat to the United States. If he'd simply said, "I was wrong but we have to get on with it," I would've had a shred of respect.

He's trying to have it both ways. He's afraid to tell the comfortable majority of the American people who supported the war that he (and by extension they) was wrong. So he fudges this issue. "I was duped," he said. "I trusted that the president would do things the right way."

Even before April 2003, what evidence did Kerry have to believe that the president would act in an internationalist manner?

The Iraq Conquest isn't a disaster just because France and Germany weren't on board.

Just as the lesser of two evils is still an evil, a bad idea less poorly executed is still a bad idea.