December 20, 2003
THE DEAN DOCTRINE:
The Democrats' Dean Dilemma: Will the Democratic center speak out? (David Tell, 12/29/2003, Weekly Standard)
[D]uring the Q&A session that followed his carefully scripted Los Angeles pronouncement, Dean wasted little time stripping himself bare of precisely that "moderate" image it had been intended to win him. There he was, in his force-averse, neo-isolationist skivvies, advancing a semi-coherent and alarmingly stingy "Dean Doctrine" that would circumscribe the exercise of U.S. military power abroad. The engagement of American arms should be "confined," Dean said, to three sets of circumstances only: One, if we've already been attacked, as with Afghanistan. Two, if we know we're about to be attacked. ("I hope we would have done something," Dean mused aloud, vaguely echoing the bizarre-o conspiracy theory he'd floated a week before, "had we known Osama bin Laden was going to run planes into the World Trade Center.") And three, though only "in some instances, when other world bodies fail," it's okay for the United States to intervene militarily in order "to stop genocide."Saddam Hussein, of course, would not have qualified for American attention under the "Dean Doctrine." Not this year, anyway: "I would have supported intervention during the Shiite massacres," the doctrinaire Dr. Dean casually allowed, "but those occurred 11 years ago." Nor, it seems, would Saddam's associations with terrorism and determination to acquire weapons of mass destruction have prompted President Dean to take action, even had the evidence been contemporaneous and undebatable. North Korea, after all, "may or may not possess nuclear weapons, but surely, at least at this time, is not an imminent threat."
Nevertheless, "I would not have hesitated to go into Iraq," Dean concluded, despite having just ruled it out as a matter of principle, "had the United Nations given us permission."
You can drag a man to the foreign-policy center with a big, subtle, ghostwritten speech. But you can't make him think from the center if he really doesn't want to.
At the risk of being accused of using the Reductio ad Hitlerium, or whatever it's called: why does the Left believe there should have been a statute of limitations on Saddam's mass murder and use of WMD? If Hitler had sued for peace and stopped the Holocaust in 1944 and survived in power until 1955, would it have been illegitimate for us to execute regime change? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2003 6:51 AM
I know this is an old post and probably nobody will read this, but I must comment.
Eleven years ago HW Bush blew it because he did not take down the dictator. Howard Dean claims he would have done that.
Well 11 years ago HW Bush had just gathered a coalition that included Arab nations and Israel. He had made a promise that he would not bring down Hussein, but made no promise that he would protect the dictator (from bombs that were lobbed suspiciously at any place the dictator might be).
When Hussein survived, HW Bush was in a very delicate position. It appeared as though there was a chance at real progress in the Israeli/Palestinian quagmire after the success of the historic coalition.
Now Dean says he would have intervened? I highly doubt it. The fact that he says he would have is just more proof that he's a liar and a scoundrel.
Here's where HW Bush blew it. He called up on the people of Iraq to bring down their dictator. He said the US would support them. Saying the US would support them cause them to mistakenly believe that we would support them militarily instead of just cheerleading.
I doubt a President Dean (scary words when you put them together) would have intervened to save Kuwait, let alone the Iraqis.
Posted by: NKR at December 20, 2003 10:53 AMNKR -- You are exactly right. President Dean never would have gone to war to expel Iraq from Kuwait, let alone invade Iraq and change the regime.
As disgusted as I can be with the country at times, I find it impossible to believe that we would elect anyone president who talks about permission from the UN and "hopes" he would act if he had foreknowledge of 9/11.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 20, 2003 11:48 AMIt isn't just Howard Dean. Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, even probably Lieberman would have done nothing. It would have meant negating their entire public careers to do what Bush did (directly confront the UN and then go ahead despite all the dithering). Clinton "fought" in Kosovo only because he was shamed into it (after the horrors of Rwanda), and it was war from a distance.
I am reminded of an ABC This Week with Brinkley back in 1982, when the issue de jour was the arms flowing into Nicaragua from Cuba. Brinkley asked Patrick Leahy and either Dodd or Kennedy (I can't remember which) what they would do to stop it - would they use force? Leahy said he would interdict the shipments. He was asked if that meant sinking Cuban ships. He said "I would not use force, I would interdict them". Brinkley just about came right out and asked him if he knew what the word meant.
Thus, the Democratic dilemma.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 20, 2003 2:22 PMIt's like the Leftists who argued that we couldn't go after Saddam because we helped (in some vague and unsubstatiated way) build him up and maintained him in the early 1980s. If anything, that means we have a greater responsibility to clean up a mess that we supposedly help make.
The same goes for actions 11 years ago-- if intervention would have been good then, then it's just as good now.
The Right is often accused of not caring, of being too materialistic, of trying to place a value on "life". Look at the derision poured onto the phrase "compasionate conservatism" . Yet when ever the time comes for putting words into deeds, it's the Left which finds a way to rationalize its way out of doing what's right, or a way to keep it's own hands clean while others suffer and die, or berate others for not doing what's right while ignoring their own, greater, sins. Dean is just being a good little Leftist.