Reality, not rhetoric

Candidates for president and Congress have been wasting their time arguing about how the United States got into the war in Iraq, say families of military personnel who are fighting that war.

People who arguably have the most at stake in Iraq say they want to hear about how and when the United States will get out.

And they’re getting increasingly frustrated with what the candidates are saying – and not saying – in their 30-second commercials and their two-minute debate responses.

“Everything is back in this history lesson,” said Peggy Doering of Spokane Valley, whose son Chris is preparing to leave with Idaho National Guard’s 116th Brigade. “Nothing is indicative of a timeline or a plan” for a withdrawal.

Some families say they can’t bear to watch the candidates bicker over the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction.

“It’s too late now. We’re over there,” said Diana Kvalheim, whose son Leif is a soldier with Washington’s 81st Armored Brigade, which is expected to be in Iraq until March.

Others say they watch the candidates closely on debates and speeches, and scan their Web sites for policy statements. And still they are unsatisfied.

“I’m fed up,” said Vicki McBride, whose son Dan also is in Iraq with Washington’s 81st Armored Brigade. “I don’t care about two years ago. They are not dealing with what are they going to do next month and next year.”

“I want to hear an exit policy and a program,” her ex-husband, Jim McBride, echoed.

Largely in agreement

One reason the presidential candidates and those further down the ticket don’t argue much about the best way to end the war in Iraq could be because they don’t really disagree, suggest policy experts who study the war.

“When you get down to it, the differences between (Bush and Kerry) are more rhetoric than reality,” said Jim Carafano, a senior fellow on defense and homeland security for the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based study group with conservative leanings.

Neither Bush nor Kerry, nor their respective parties’ congressional candidates, is calling for a quick withdrawal. Instead, all are talking about removing troops when Iraq’s new government is in place, and the country is stable.

The war started in March 2003 with air attacks followed quickly by a ground campaign that captured Baghdad within a month. Major combat operations were declared over by May 2003, but fighting continues in some areas of the country and the United States currently has about 138,000 military personnel in Iraq.

American military casualties were just under 1,070 on Tuesday, with another 7,000 wounded.

Support for the war may have waned in Washington state, according to a recent survey for The Spokesman-Review and three other newspapers. In that mid-September poll, more than half the people said they now think the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake. But more than three out of five voters surveyed said they believe U.S. troops should remain in Iraq until the country is stable.

While Kerry voted to give Bush the authority to wage the war, he later criticized the president for doing it without more support from the international community and voted against an $87 billion spending bill that helped pay for some aspects of the war. In Washington’s Senate race, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray voted against the war resolution, but in favor of the spending bill, while Republican Rep. George Nethercutt supported both measures.

Insurgent forces aren’t likely to change their tactics after Jan. 1 if Kerry wins, Carafano believes. The Baathists, former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime who are now fighting the American-led coalition, are in a life-and-death struggle, he said; terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are going to keep trying to kill people.

Kerry is calling for a greater role by the United Nations, and promising to reach out to America’s traditional European allies, who did not support Bush on the invasion. Carafano and some other policy experts are skeptical the Democratic candidate can get much help.

“The Europeans aren’t going to send troops, period. Their people aren’t going to let them,” Carafano argued. And even if they did, “Zarqawi will kill Frenchmen or Germans as happily as he kills Americans.”

They might be convinced to send nonmilitary personnel, such as trainers for the police Iraq will need to restore order and curb crime, said Mike O’Hanlon, who served on a U.S. delegation to the country after the war and now oversees the Brookings Institute’s collection of data called the Iraq Index. The institute is a centrist organization with an emphasis on foreign policy and economics studies.

“Most of the country is not stable. The crime rate is very high and Iraqi security forces are not doing the job,” O’Hanlon said. But even if the Europeans took over that job, the U.S. military presence would not be significantly reduced, he added.

How to end it?

Kerry said in a recent debate that he hoped to get U.S. troops home in his first term; Bush criticized that timetable, saying that the troops must stay as long as needed. None of the congressional candidates is willing to put a time limit on the American military presence in Iraq.

On that, they show some historic perspective. Americans were told in 1995 that troops would be in Bosnia for a year; they’re still there.

Kerry has actually talked about increasing the size of the active duty military in the next four years, to avoid using so many reservists and National Guardsmen.

“How are you going to get 20,000 more volunteer soldiers when this is such an unpopular war?” wonders Vicki McBride.

If the answer is “pay them more money,” she’s skeptical – the family raised the money to buy her son his body armor, and he regularly writes home for help getting simple supplies like batteries.

Rick Barton, a senior adviser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of a report on reconstructing Iraq, said none of the candidates seem to be considering one prospect that could force American troops out quickly. Some two months after the U.S. elections, Iraq is scheduled to have its first democratic elections.

“The unifying argument in the Iraqi election is going to be, ‘Invite the foreigners to leave,’ ” Barton predicted.

A new government elected on such a platform would have to make good on that theme, he said. That would force the United States to at least set up a timetable to leave.

So the question for any candidate for president or Congress is how America can determine when it’s safe to begin leaving, he believes.

The first goal would be making Baghdad, which has a third of the nation’s population, safe enough that Iraqi forces can manage it, Barton said.

It’s probably not reasonable to say U.S. troops will stay until the violence ends, said the Heritage Foundation’s Carafano. Some countries like Colombia are beset with violence but their political process still moves forward.

That may be a better yardstick for withdrawing from Iraq, he contends.

‘Not for us’

As the American forces are reduced, the United States should also restructure the billions of dollars in foreign aid to make sure it goes more directly to Iraqis, Barton believes. That would send a clear message that “we’re there for the Iraqis, not for us.”

Other countries might be convinced to help fund the reconstruction, said Carafano. But Iraqis must be in charge of reconstructing Iraq, just as Europeans reconstructed Europe and the Japanese reconstructed Japan after World War II.

Carafano says the options are so limited in Iraq and the presidential candidates’ plans so similar that he believes voters don’t really have much choice between Bush or Kerry, or the congressional candidates who largely back their parties’ leaders. His advice to voters: “Pick another issue to worry about.”

But candidates might be warned that families with troops in the field aren’t going to do that. Some started the campaign determined not to vote for the president who sent their child to Iraq, but are beginning to think he’s at least more consistent than his opponent. Others are leery of switching presidents in the middle of a war, but say they want a commander and chief who seems to at least share their concerns.

If they can’t talk about the nuances of how to better spend reconstruction money or name a specific bench mark for a withdrawal, maybe they should at least stop dwelling in the past and pointing fingers, said Jim Murphy, a former Spokane County Superior Court judge whose son recently returned from eight months in Iraq.

“There is not a consistent give and take between the parties on Iraq, there’s just name calling,” Murphy said.