ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY:

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Allies Not in Formation on Kerry's Troops Plan
Nations have a hard time supporting his proposal to use their soldiers to fill out the force in Iraq.
By Paul Richter and Maria L. La Ganga
Times Staff Writers

August 9, 2004

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has staked much of his campaign on a proposal he hopes will convince voters that he can extricate the United States from Iraq more quickly and at less cost than President Bush.

But Kerry's plan, which promises to effectively shift much of the Iraq war burden from America to its allies, so far is failing to receive the international support the proposal must have to succeed.

Kerry in recent appearances and interviews has been intensifying his effort to spotlight what he sees as the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq — especially the failure to broaden international involvement — as a fundamental difference between the two candidates. But Kerry's proposals depend on changing the minds of foreign leaders who do not want to defy their electorates by sending forces into what many consider to be a U.S.-made mess.

"I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them," Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said in a typical comment.

Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don't want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.
This is a golden opportunity for Democrats to reconsider their obvious misunderstanding of geopolitical reality: the rift with Europe is not a function of George Bush, but of a divirgence of interests between an America that champions freedom and democracy and a Europe that just wants to die in peace.