Behind the Times

What Bush Should Have Said - His Iraq speech was only a year late

Disclaimer: Where President Bush's smirking chimp appearance and clearly befuddled delivery once aroused angry passion when he spoke, they now lull me to sleep, acting as a sort of lullaby on the notion that anyone, no matter their skills, can one day become the leader of the free world. So while I watched his obscenely long address last night, it would be fair to say that I didn't absorb every nuance, if you can refer to such a thing when the speaker is so wholly without a sense of nuance in the first place.

With that said, I think Fred Kaplan's assessment of the address, and of Bush's position now, is a fair one. Maybe this was the perfect thing to say a year ago, but that ship has sailed. Today there is an emerging consensus among Americans and Iraqis: a whole lot of people in both countries think that America should get out of Iraq as soon as we can, and a whole lot of people in both countries agree that President Bush is thoroughly inept at handling this situation. With our credibility shot, it's time for new leadership of Iraqi operations. That starts with an increased role for the international community, ought to continue with a bit of regime change here in the United States this winter, and will hopefully, one day, result in an Iraq that Iraqis control. If that happens, at least this wayward adventure will have a happy ending for someone. But even if Bush had been right to invade Iraq--and I still think, on balance, he made a mistake, no matter how much good the invasion could potentially achieve in some far-off, unimaginable future--he's clearly bungled every opportunity since. American involvement in Iraq and in the international community as a whole will only improve when Americans send a statement to Bush and to the world that we won't stand for this kind of "leadership" and demand a new way.

If this sounds like a bit of ABB--Anybody But Bush--well, it is. There are many good reasons to vote for Kerry; I've outlined many of them, including the ways he would change the tax code, his more enlightened social values, and his commitment to making health care affordable and available for many more Americans. (You can surely find more by visiting his website, www.johnkerry.com, and taking a look at some of his detailed plans.) But the single best reason to vote for John Kerry is (and will probably continue to be until this election is over) because he is not George W. Bush, whose categorical incompetence cannot be tolerated any longer. If we want to function in the world--if we want to function, as a nation, at all--it's time to drop the monkey and elect a higher form of primate.