Let’s face it, John Kerry has NOT come out with a clear position on the all-important Iraq question. He needs a running-mate who has.
So how about Marines Gen. Anthony C. Zinni (retd.)?
Zinni’s book only came out today. No time to read it yet! But he did a really good interview with CBS yesterday. (And here are the remarks he made at the Center for Defense Information on May 12th.)
Zinni was also the one who famously, before the fact of the Bushite invasion of Iraq, warned it would turn into a “Bay of Goats”.
Yesterday, to CBS’s Steve Kroft, he said:
- And to think that we are going to ‘stay the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it’s time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it’s been a failure.
The only thing I’d fault there is to say it’s time to do both: to change course and to hold the present bunch of so-called ‘policymakers’ acountable.
Exactly who, in Zinni’s view, is it that should be held accountable?
- Well, it starts with at the top. If you’re the secretary of defense and you’re responsible for that. If you’re responsible for that planning and that execution on the ground. If you’ve assumed responsibility for the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and everything else, then you bear responsibility…
Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.
[Kroft comments coyly that, “Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as ‘the neo-conservatives’ who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel.” He names as members of this group Wolfie, Feith, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, and ‘Scooter’ Libby, and adds: “Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.” Zinni responds as follows…]
I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody – everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do…
And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that’s the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn’t criticize who they were. I certainly don’t know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I’m not interested.
I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don’t believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn’t know where it came from.
So anyway, what state does Zinni come from? Could he balance the ticket geographically? Who knows?
But quite aside from any musing about Kerry putting him on the ticket, I think it is great that this accomplished, well-informed, and insightful person has gotten his views so well out there in the public discourse–and just before the Prez finally goes on the air tonight to “reassure” us that he has a policy on Iraq.
(As my son said: If the only thing the President has been able to say during the past four important days is that he will “shortly be making a speech designed to reassure us”– then how reassuring is that?)
Helena, I don’t see enough difference between Bush’s “we must stay the course” nonsense, Kerry’s latest “I promise to have all the troops out by the end of my first term” thing, and Zinni’s conviction that the Americans have to stay in Iraq until it is all nice and stabilized and happy. None of them – not a single one – seems to understand that it is time to stop interfering in Iraq’s business and let the Iraqis create their own future – for better or for worse.
I agree with Shirin that Kerry ought to offer a clearer distinction between his policy on Iraq and Bush’s policy. The only difference I can see is that Kerry promises to be more competent than Bush, while ignoring the question of whether the US should be in Iraq at all. I disagree with the conventional wisdom that Iraq will dissolve into chaos without the force of US arms there. If the centrifugal forces are so great that only a strong military force can keep order, that will be the case for years to come.
That said, I know that if Kerry were to adopt the policy I’d like to see, he’d be defeated in November. It seems that most Americans want to pursue a policy which is not in their long-term best interests, or the Iraqi’s either. Americans do not know enough about the world outside its borders to understand why their goals in Iraq are a mistake.
I give Helena credit for originality on her Zinni nomination for Kerry’s VP but I disagee with her idea. One of the US’s most serious and deleterious problems is its pursuit of militarism. This is again a policy that Americans think strengthens their security but which, in fact, weakens it instead. Militarism wastes too much of America’s wealth and erodes the goodwill it needs to be effective abroad. Zinni may be a good man but, as a retired general, he exemplifies to me the over-reliance on military arms to advance America’s agenda with regard to the rest of the world.
Hi Helen.Great works.Think Zinni a terrific V/P choice for Kerry.He has his ducks in line and I promote him whenever possible.
Interesting comment Mushinronsha. I
“hope that Kerry is trying to make a De Gaulle – that is giving the impression of be willing to continue the war so he can win the election. Then pull out in the beginning of his presidency”
In other words, you are hoping Kerry is lying in order to get into the White House? Well, he wouldn’t be the first, that’s for sure, but how far have we sunk that people are actually hoping a candidate is making campaign promises he has no intention of keeping?
In any case, a few days ago I heard he has promised to have the U.S. completely out of Iraq by the end of his first term. I was not thrilled.
I doubt General Zinni will be chosen even though I admire him and wish that he would be. Problem is he comes from an Italian Catholic working class background. Look at all the recent flap about us Catholics here lately…two on the same ticket would just make that worse. I had thought that President Kennedy had broken that barrier but I see now that is not true.
Shirin,
I
From reading the Zinni – Clancy interviews ,I understood that Zinni is pretty much a hard-core conservative politically.That he is criticising Pentagon and the war doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll join a Democratic ticket.Some others may have better info on this,of course.
Zinni is on record as being a Republican so I doubt we’ll see him on a Kerry ticket.
Zinni- as VP choice – would bring strenght to Kerry’s ticket. There are only 2 real issues in this election- the Economy and Iraq.
Kerry has not gone after Bush / Bush Pentagon gang about mess the made of Iraq.
Zinni is foremost US expert on Middle East.
Yes, he is nominally a Republican, but like millions of other Americans, Zinni is an ANTI-BUSH Republican.
He is widely respected, and his supporters range from extreme-left anti-war activists to solid people on the Right who know that Bush is “as stupid as a rock. And who has made serious strategic errors in going into Iraq.
jk
Zinni- as VP choice – would bring strenght to Kerry’s ticket. There are only 2 real issues in this election- the Economy and Iraq.
Kerry has not gone after Bush / Bush Pentagon gang about mess the made of Iraq.
Zinni is foremost US expert on Middle East.
Yes, he is nominally a Republican, but like millions of other Americans, Zinni is an ANTI-BUSH Republican.
He is widely respected, and his supporters range from extreme-left anti-war activists to solid people on the Right who know that Bush made serious strategic errors in going into Iraq.
jk