Honor: John Kerry's lesson for Brian Baird

T.A. Barnhart

John Kerry lost the 2004 election for two reasons. One, the fix was in in Ohio. Second, he is a gentleman, a man of honor and decency, and he just never understood how ruthless and descipable his opponents were. (Having an inept campaign team didn't help, either.) But the same factors that made him a weak presidential candidate make him a great U.S. Senator.

Above all, honor. John Kerry not only joined the Navy during the Vietnam War, he had himself put into some of the most dangerous situations because that was the honorable thing to do. His country was at war, and a gentleman goes to the aid of the country. I don't agree with that thinking — Europe lost a generation of its best young men who believed that during World War I — but I respect the conviction that puts duty and honor before self.

Sen Kerry's honorable nature remains steadfast. When he was considering another try for the presidency, his party let him know that his run was not welcome and likely to be divisive. Kerry, an honorable man, respected the wishes of his colleagues and he put the party's goals before his own. He stepped down, which had to be a terribly difficult choice to make. After all, in 2004 he came so close; I'm sure he'd read Robert Kennedy, Jr's, article in Rolling Stone detailing how he, like Al Gore, was the victim of the most heinous political criminality.

More than anything, however, it's Kerry's honest, on-going confession that he was wrong to vote for the war in Iraq that demonstrates that he is, above all, an honorable man.

In today's Huffington Post, he excoriates the Bush Administration and their Republican flunkies in Congress for their abject failures in Iraq. Sen Kerry chaired the hearing on the GAO report which demonstrated, point by point, how the "surge" has failed to do the one thing it was meant to do:

I know from experience that there's no such thing as a military solution to a situation like this, and no amount of "metrics" can create one. Our own generals have always confirmed this about Iraq. And by the way — go read all of the statements at the time about the "reason" for the escalation — it was to buy political breathing room for Iraqis to compromise. Period. It hasn't happened. So it all boils down to the same thing: these are more "steps" that don't get you any closer to your real goals, "successes" that don't lead to any resolution.

This is a war John Kerry endorsed, a war that is one of the worst mistakes our country has ever made, perhaps only behind slavery and Vietnam. When the time came for John Kerry to decide about this war, he got his vote completely wrong. So did Hillary Clinton, but she continues, and sadly seems to be succeeding at, to evade personal responsibility for her vote — her failure. Not John Kerry (nor, for that matter, John Edwards, someone I admire more and more even though I back Barack Obama). The most important vote John Kerry may have ever had to make in his career in the Senate, and he got it wrong — yet he refuses to back down from that error. He stands as tall in his admission of failure as he does when detailing the many fine things he has done in public service.

And now he will be leading the fight to force a firm date for withdrawal from Iraq.

A political solution in Iraq cannot come about without a clear deadline on where our troops will be pulling out. Only Iraqis can end this civil war, and they aren't — and won't be — making any progress with an open-ended, massive presence by our military in their country.

As any 14-year-old with a lick of sense might say, no duh.

When I read Sen Kerry's article, the first thing I did was call his office in Boston and thank him for what he is doing to end the war. I was asked to leave a voice message with my statement — not thanked and told goodbye, but asked to share what I felt. Sen Kerry and his office clearly value the thoughts and support from all Americans.

Brain Baird's office? Not so much. From his Vancouver office, I got a surly "uh huh, ok" and no indication my message was going to be heard. The woman in his DC office, however, did say she would pass my message along (my message being: Rep Baird was right before he went to Iraq, wrong after he got back, and he needs to read Sen Kerry's article, and oh by the way, I don't want my son sent to Iraq thank you very much).

This is a very simple issue, and it always has been. This was always the wrong war (as if there ever is a right war). It must end now. We have demonstrated repeatedly that there is nothing we can do to force the Iraqis to settle their issues peacefully. This is likely to be Yugoslavia all over again. Centuries of hate and antagonism were just too strong; nothing was going to stop people from having a jolly good go at slaughtering the bejeezus out of each other. The Iraqis are determined to shed a hell of a lot of blood, and the only way we can stop them is the same way Saddam stopped them (and Tito stopped the so-called Yugoslavians): tyranny and violent repression.

John Kerry does not say that an American withdrawal from Iraq will not be horrible for many Iraqis. But until we set the date for our occupation to end, they will keep on keeping on. They are like a bunch of drunks, sitting around and singing that old Robert Earl Keen song: "The road goes on forever and the party never ends!" Until we take away all the bottles, turn off the jukebox and force them to sober up, they'll just keep on with their current actions. Perhaps seeing our forces leave may get them to change course and finally come to a political settlement. I know most people doubt that; more likely will be an escalation in violence, the appearance of Iran to "help" and any number of other outcomes we in the U.S. won't be exactly jiggy wid.

The alternative is to keep killing our troops, the contractors Halliburton bribes, and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. President Bush, in comparing Iraq to Vietnam (perversely saying we left that war too soon), said one outcome was a thing called "killing fields". As ever, he got that wrong. The killing fields were in Cambodia, after we left Vietnam, and had nothing to do with that war. Ironically, from a commie-hating American point of view, it was the Vietnamese who stopped Pol Pot's genocide. Ending the war in Vietnam, which we did by leaving, had nothing to do with the killing fields; it was halted by those terrible Communists we could not defeat in battle. It's possible that Iran may serve a similar purpose in Iraq once we are gone, but only in league with other nations. One outcome of this idiotic war: We are going to have depend on Iraq's neighbors to bring peace, as well as the same European nations that did nothing to stop the Bosnian genocide.

One thing is clear: We broke Iraq, but we can't fix it. The shame of America's arrogance, violence and stupidity will haunt us for generations. We've made enemies where should have been friends and allies; and further tragedy is going to follow these mistakes that could, and should, have been avoided. No amount of bloodshed can undo what Bush and his people have done, what the American people have allowed them to do. No matter how long we stay there, how many Iraqis and Saudis we kill in battle, how many civilians we slaughter with our warfare, no matter how many of our own people we sacrifice, we will never fix what we have done to Iraq by remaining there as an occupying, war-making force.

The one thing we can do is get the hell out of there. Once we are gone, the Iraqi people can start taking full responsibility for their nation. Wasn't that the goal, after all? With our warmaking and occupation ended, we can begin to work in concert with the rest of the world. Once the violence has run its course, we can supply real humanitarian and economic aid, and we can support our allies who night have influence (France and Germany, for example, or Jordan and Egypt). But while we remain, the only outcome will be death.

John Kerry has been to war, and he knows its realities. He has also failed as a public servant, by voting to authorize this debacle, but he has never shied from owning up to that failure. Today he stands up for the only course of action that has any hope of bringing peace to Iraq: an American withdrawal, the date set in stone and the consequences being left to the Iraqis to decide.

I'll be working continuously this month trying to set a deadline to force a new policy in Iraq. I'll try to stop by as often as I can this month with ways you can, if you choose, put the pressure on the Roadblock Republicans to force them to take a new tack. In the end, it's been sustained action by millions of activists that have gotten us this far, and it's only through the loud voices of those activists that we can get what's right — an end to the Bush doctrine in Iraq, and a policy worthy of our soldiers' sacrifice.

Rather than work to fix what he got wrong, Sen Kerry could have chosen to hide behind rationalizations and freshly invented benchmarks; he could, like Mitch McConnell and other right-wing toadies, have found new reasons to continue with the failures in the hope that doing so would let him evade his own ultimate responsibility.

But that's what cowards and dishonorable thugs do. Gentlemen of honor own up to their mistakes and work to correct them. They speak truth, no matter how personally costly. John Kerry knows that as he works to end this war, he helped begin it. He carries the knowledge that his acquiescence to Bush's lies — at best, that he was suckered by Rove and Cheney — allowed this bloodbath to begin. But he's an honorable man, and a courageous one, and he doesn't let a little thing like pride get in the way of doing the right thing.

Or perhaps pride is why he is working so hard to undo his mistake. After all, the people who are truly responsible for this war have shown neither pride, nor courage, nor honor. Only avarice, disregard for human life, a level of hubris that would gobsmack Shakespeare, and a lust to spend endless amounts of blood in the name of God and petroleum.

I only hope Brian Baird observes the example of John Kerry and comes to his senses. Otherwise he will find himself one day full of regret for the deaths he caused by failing not only to have the courage to admit his own mistake but the honor to admit that mistake and then do what is right. But unlike John Kerry in the Senate today, it will be too late for Rep Baird to do anything but regret. Not a very honorable course of action.

By T.A. Barnhart Sept. 06, 2007