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E-mail this America's next president The incompetent or the incoherent? Oct 28th 2004 From The Economist print edition With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist at tack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical pol itical and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would b e an especially elevated and notable affair. This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something o nly once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerr y, not Mr Bush.
Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to protes t that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking our no ses in other people's politics. Translated, this invariably means that p rotesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect a lack of awareness about our readership. The Economist's weekly sales in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus, as at ev ery presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful for us to say how we would think about our voteif we had one. The case against George Bush That decision cannot be separated from the terrible memory of September 1 1th, nor can it fail to begin as an evaluation of the way in which Mr Bu sh and his administration responded to that day. For Mr Bush's record du ring the past three years has been both inspiring and disturbing. Mr Bush was inspiring in the way he reacted to the new world in which he, and America, found itself. His military response in Afghanistan was not the sort of poorly dire cted lashing out that Bill Clinton had used in 1998 after al-Qaeda destr oyed two American embassies in east Africa: it was a resolute, measured effort, which was reassuringly sober about the likely length of the camp aign against Osama bin Laden and the elusiveness of anything worth the n ame of victory. Mistakes were made, notably when at Tora Bora Mr bin Lad en and other leaders probably escaped, and when following the war both A merica and its allies devoted insufficient military and financial resour ces to helping Afghanistan rebuild itself. But overall, the mission has achieved a lot: the Taliban were removed, al-Qaeda lost its training cam ps and its base, and Afghanistan has just held elections that bring caut ious hope for the central government's future ability to bring stability and prosperity. The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of th em to the American base at Guantnamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a leg al limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America's own legal system. That act reflected a genuinely difficult problem: that of havin g captured people of unknown status but many of whom probably did want t o kill Americans, at a time when to set them free would have been politi cally controversial, to say the least. That difficulty cannot neutralise the damage caused by this decision, however. Today, Guantnamo Bay offe rs constant evidence of America's hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it . This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innoce nt or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation. The White House's proposed remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds th e problem. When Mr Bush decided to frame his foreign policy in the sort of language and objectives previously associated with Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy o r Ronald Reagan, he was bound to be greeted with cynicism. To paraphrase a formula invented by his ally, Tony Blair, Mr Bush was promising to be tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism, and the latter he attributed to the lack of democracy, human rights and opportunity in much of the world, especially the Arab countr ies. To call for an effort to change that lamentable state of affairs wa s inspiring and surely correct. The credibility of the call was enhanced by this month's Afghan election, and may in future be enhanced by succe ssful and free elections in Iraq. But that remains ahead, and meanwhile Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guant namo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristi c thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abus es at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that t he mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned. Although the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been shown to have been flimsy and, wit h hindsight, wrong, Saddam's record of deception in the 12 years since t he first Gulf war meant that it was right not to give him the benefit of the doubt. The containment scheme deployed around him was unsustainable and politically damaging: military bases in holy Saudi Arabia, sanction s that impoverished and even killed Iraqis and would have collapsed. But changing the regime so incompetently was a huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remn ant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Ir aqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventu al success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unneces sary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both fo r effectiveness and for moral probity. If Mr Bush had meanwhile been making progress elsewhere in the Middle Eas t, such mistakes might have been neutralised. Israel and Palestine remain in their bitter conflict, with America readily accusabl e of bias. In Iran the conservatives have become stronger and the countr y has moved closer to making nuclear weapons. Egypt, Syria and Saudi Ara bia have not turned hostile, but neither have they been terribly support ive nor reform-minded. Libya's renunciation of WMD is the sole clear pie ce of progress. This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To succ eed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect opportunity to di smiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and declare a new start, h e chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as if they were a low-lev el, disciplinary issue. The current approach in Iraq, of training Iraqi security forces and preparing for elections to establish an Iraqi government with popular support, certainly represe nts an improvement, although America still has too few troops. And no on e knows, for example, whether Mr Rumsfeld will stay in his job, or go. I n the end, one can do no more than guess about whether in a second term Mr Bush would prove more competent. Making sense of John Kerry That does at least place him on equal terms with his rival, Mr Kerry. Wit h any challenger, voters have to make a leap of faith about what the new man might be like in office. What he says during the campaign is a poor guide: Mr Bush said in 2000 that America should be a humble nation, bu t strong and sh...
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