The Lesson of John Kerry\'d5s Secret Iraq Plan

The New York Observer, May 29th, 2007

Richard Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War in 1968, and apparently John Kerry had one of his own for the Iraq War in 2004.

This, at least, is what Robert Shrum, one of the architects of Mr. Kerry’s fruitless White House campaign, claims in his new memoir, No Excuses.

A President Kerry, Mr. Shrum reveals, would have communicated “in confidence” to France, Germany and other allies with an economic stake in Middle East stability an ultimatum: “If they didn’t send enough troops to form a true multinational force, one not dominated by the United States, then we would withdraw our troops in three to six months.”

The candidate dared not speak this during the campaign, Mr. Shrum explains, because those same allies would have felt immediate public pressure to reject the plan, which Mr. Kerry’s Republican foes would have simultaneously demagogued as a “cut-and-run” scheme that would offer the despised French veto power over U.S. foreign policy.

“Kerry’s notion,” Mr. Shrum concludes, “was the kind of policy that can only succeed once you are already president.”

Fair enough, although it strains the imagination to envision the Kerry plan, had it been implemented, altering the fundamental realities that have made the occupation such a bloody misadventure.

But Mr. Shrum’s broader point—that there is a fundamental incompatibility between serious discussions of foreign policy and domestic electoral politics—is well taken. Mr. Kerry would absolutely have been shredded had he advanced his “secret plan” during the campaign, and for all the wrong reasons. Recall that a Harris poll just two weeks before the 2004 election found that 62 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had “strong links” to Al Qaeda. The gap between the public’s perception and foreign-policy realities was staggering.

Mr. Kerry’s calculation feels duplicitous. Every candidate for the Presidency owes it to the public, one would like to think, to level with them over how he or she will handle a matter as consequential as war.

But it’s also worth recognizing that Mr. Kerry’s approach has actually been the norm for America’s wartime Presidents, who have instinctively understood the limits of the foreign-policy rhetoric the public is capable of stomaching—and who often engaged in foreign affairs in a way completely at odds with their campaign themes.

Woodrow Wilson, who stood on the sidelines as Europe went up in flames during his first term, knew there would be no second term if he talked about plunging American troops into the conflict. Instead, he campaigned for re-election in 1916 under the slogan “He kept us out of war,” which was just enough—barely—to fend off Republican Charles Evans Hughes, whom Wilson’s campaign ironically charged with secretly planning to enter the European conflict. Three months into his second term, though, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, and American forces ended up playing a pivotal role in thwarting a German advance that nearly gobbled up Paris. Next page >