REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Gore Debates Blair
The erstwhile veep blames America first, while the prime minister takes a stand for freedom.
Former Vice President Al Gore assailed President Bush's handling of the war on terror on Monday, and it didn't take long for a rebuttal. It came yesterday from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, once Mr. Gore's ally as part of the center-left Third Way but these days a fast friend of Mr. Bush's Iraq campaign.
No Democrat can say any longer that Mr. Gore is ducking the issue. He told San Francisco's Commonwealth Club that the Bush Administration's focus on Iraq is not merely unnecessary but, worse, a politically motivated distraction from the real war on terror.
"In the immediate aftermath of September 11th," Mr. Gore said, "we had an enormous reservoir of good will and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do."
We don't want to take interpretive liberties, but that phrase, "What we're going to do," sounds like the things Democrats used to say in the days after Vietnam. For that matter, it sounds like the things the Germans have been saying about America lately. The main threat to world security now isn't Saddam Hussein, but is the U.S. response to Saddam. Dare we say, Blame America First?
Perhaps Mr. Gore really believes this and is taking the chance to extricate himself from the hawkish position he staked out by supporting the Gulf War. Maybe he sees an opening for 2004 on the left wing of the Democratic Party, and is already worried about being outflanked by John Kerry and Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Of course, to really win over the left he'll have to go even further and explicitly repudiate what he said earlier this year, when he told the Council on Foreign Relations that a "final reckoning with [Iraq] should be on the table."
Mr. Gore will also have to debate other leaders of the international center-left who are rallying to support the U.S. Czech President Vaclav Havel, who wants NATO to join the anti-Iraq coalition, says the rest of the world will bear blame if the U.S. has to act unilaterally: "It is necessary to take action against deadly evil, even using force if that is needed."
And then there is the redoubtable Mr. Blair, an ally who continues to risk dissent in his party and country for a cause in which he believes. Yesterday Mr. Blair released a dossier of intelligence on Iraq. The 50-page report describes how Saddam has tried to buy uranium from Africa for use in nuclear weapons, has 20 missiles that could reach British military bases in Cyprus as well as Israel and NATO members Greece and Turkey, and stating that Iraq's chemical weapons are on standby for use within 45 minutes. "The policy of containment is not working. The WMD program is not shut down. It is up and running," Mr. Blair told Parliament.
Where Mr. Gore sees in those weapons a "threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf," Mr. Blair sees a threat to "the stability of the world." While Mr. Gore worries about American "unilateralism," Mr. Blair recognizes that "alongside the diplomacy there must be genuine preparedness and planning to take action if diplomacy fails." Where Mr. Gore advises action only "within the framework of international law," Mr. Blair notes that "unless we face up to the threat . . . we risk undermining the authority of the U.N." While Mr. Gore frets about the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action, Mr. Blair says, "The one thing I find odd are people who can find the notion of regime change in Iraq somehow distasteful."
That last point may be the greatest irony of Mr. Gore's position. The same man who criticized Mr. Bush during the 2000 campaign for his opposition to "nation-building" is now passing up the opportunity to get behind the greatest nation-building--indeed, region-building--opportunity of a generation.
Contrary to Mr. Gore's claim that the Bush Administration has no plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, Condoleezza Rice has committed the U.S. to bringing political pluralism there. And contrary to his complaints about unilateral action, the U.S. is working with the United Nations to prove its relevance. Mr. Gore of course acknowledges that Saddam is dangerous, but says now is not the time to deal with him. The question that begs is when will be the right time? Mr. Gore's administration ignored the threat for eight years, as multilateral sanctions against Iraq frayed and U.N. inspectors were ejected.
Some of our Democratic friends have said to us since the trauma of 9/11 that any U.S. President would have had to respond the way Mr. Bush has. A President Gore would have been just as determined and shown the same moral clarity. Mr. Gore has just told the country what he thinks about that argument.
