Iraq: There are terrible ways to do a good thing

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?catid=1104&custid=67

By Matthew Miller

My biggest fear about John Kerry's prospects - that is, apart from the general dread most Democrats have been feeling until this week - has come from imagining a particular moment in the debates. It is the moment when George Bush or Jim Lehrer turns to Kerry and says: "I still don't get where you are on this, Senator - do you think it was a good idea to take out Saddam Hussein?"

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"There are terrible ways to do a good thing," Kerry should begin, regarding Saddam.

"At every step on Iraq, George Bush has made choices that have made us less secure and more isolated. And the truth is that there can be no possible excuse for these mistakes and misjudgments - because Iraq was a war fought at a time of our own choosing.

"If the war with Iraq had been thrust upon us, our judgment of George Bush's performance might be different. There might have been no time to court our allies and to build the kind of genuine coalition that George H.W. Bush assembled for the first Gulf War - a coalition that bore 90 percent of the cost of that conflict.

"But in a war fought at a time of our own choosing, there is no excuse for these diplomatic failures. Why didn't George Bush fly to Paris or Berlin, and make major speeches in those capitals, knowing how dramatically world opinion stood against us? Then at least we could have said we respected our longtime allies enough to try to persuade them of our course. Now instead we stand diminished and isolated, viewed with reason as arrogant, trigger-happy and untrustworthy.