[Reader Tony Hutchison sent me the following thoughts on the presidential race, and I’m posting them with his permission, as a follow-up to this earlier post with the views of The Dude, and a contribution to the current debate.]
There’s been some smug liberal commentary recently, from the likes of Will Hutton, claiming that Blair has alienated himself from the mainstream of the US Democratic Party (though why this should be so given that Kerry himself voted for regime change in the Senate I’m not entirely sure).
For myself, I definitely want Kerry to win as I am now fairly sure that the Bush administration – particularly the Cheney/Rumsfeld axis – is simply not serious enough about ‘nation-building’ and the broad ideological, social and cultural as well as military struggles that long, arduous process entails. George Packer elaborates on this theme here, making what I feel are some very appropriate historical analogies. It’s time for the Democratic Party to rediscover its FDR/Truman tradition of internationalism and support for those who seek to uphold democratic values in the midst of totalitarian barbarism. Only then will we find our Islamic Havels, Solzhenitsyns and Walesas.
To be honest I feel that the pro-intervention left is not being critical enough about Bush at the moment, perhaps out of a misplaced fear of giving ground to their opponents. This is a huge mistake in my opinion and just mimics the churlishness of those on the left who refuse to accept any positive repercussions from the removal of Saddam. At least Christopher Hitchens seems to have backtracked from the type of unequivocal, across the board support for Bush he was offering last year.
Personally, I felt pretty sure that Bush et al would renege on many of their nation-building obligations prior to intervention but also felt, and still feel, that criticism of US policy would only become legitimate after Hussein’s regime had been toppled. My own loathing of Bush and co was simply a luxury the Iraqi people could not then afford. That is not the case now. Bush’s exit would be – given the fact that Kerry is clearly no Howard Dean neo-isolationist type – as beneficial to them as it would be to the rest of us who long for a United States that, once again, listens as well as it leads. (Tony Hutchison)