MONKEY BUSINESS:

Note to Democrats: Get a Defense Policy (Gary Hart, October 3, 2002, NY Times)

Once again the Democratic Party finds itself on the defensive on defense. Congressional Democrats are responding to a Republican president's initiative, this time in Iraq. And we will continue to be on the defensive until we produce a cohesive foreign policy that spells out our plans for national security and homeland security and describes the circumstances under which American force can be used abroad. [...]

There was, and possibly still is, an alternative on Iraq policy. Weeks ago Democrats could have adopted a policy of coercive inspection. This policy would have required United Nations authorization for inspectors, accompanied by a sizeable international military force, to carry out unobstructed and unlimited inspections throughout Iraq. Iraqi resistance, according to the resolution, would have triggered a United States-led military operation to disarm Iraq by force. Thus, any conflict resulting from disarmament of Iraq would be sanctioned by the international community and would not result from unilateral action by the United States. [...]

[D]emocrats can and must spell out the conditions under which American forces would be deployed to promote peace and protect global security. We can also propose such initiatives as an international peace-making force. And we can show that there are alternatives to the administration's calls for pre-emptive "regime change"--a euphemism for overthrowing governments - and to its aggressive pronouncements that no nation will be permitted to rival us militarily.

As his own essay tends to reveal, the Democrats already have a defense policy and it is precisely the one that everyone is urging on the U.S.: they want to do whatever the U.N. tells us to do and nothing else. This, of course, is precisely why they won't spell it out in the kind of explicit terms that he's proposing. Significantly, neither does he; because as any American politician knows, such an admission would be the kiss of death for the Democrat Party. It was bad enough when they made themselves the anti-gun party--a position they completely abandoned after the 1994 debacle--let the Democrats become the party of blue helmets and black helicopters and they can kiss the West, Midwest and South goodbye, in perpetuity.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 8, 2002 6:16 PM