Only George W. Bush is allowed to give Osama bin Laden pyschological victories, says Bob Kerrey
Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, has had enough of the Democratic Party trying to keep his country out of the war. He’s tired of Democrats handing Osama bin Laden psychological victories.
We are the Unites States. We will impose democracy on anyone we want. And if we’re going to give psychological victories to a guy who killed thousands of our citizens and got away with it, well, it’s going to come from the top.
At this year’s graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address. This brave woman, who has been imprisoned for her criticism of the Iranian government, had many good and wise things to say to our graduates, which earned their applause.
But one applause line troubled me. Ms. Ebadi said: “Democracy cannot be imposed with military force.”
What troubled me about this statement–a commonly heard criticism of U.S. involvement in Iraq–is that those who say such things seem to forget the good U.S. arms have done in imposing democracy on countries like Japan and Germany, or Bosnia more recently. …
Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn’t you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would. …
This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified–though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.
–WKW