I noted in this space (2003.03.24) that if the U.S.-Iraq war continued to November 2004, it would be to the detriment of Bush's electoral hopes.
What has happened since?
Bush's declaration that the war is over now seems sadly laughable. Much of Iraq is in the hands of insurgents—and who are those insurgents but the splinters of the army supposedly defeated?
The 1000th U.S. soldier died from this invasion a few weeks ago, and such a number did not go unnoticed in the mainstream press. It is a low number as conflicts go, but a poetic one, and certainly voters will remember it if they care to.
Afghanistan is a mess, with the Taliban and other factions still up and kicking, resisting any kind of political centralization. The opium is plentiful. Kharzai is President of Kabul only, despite his recent country-wide "election."
Libya loudly proclaimed an end to its nuclear aims, while North Korea loudly proclaimed it was continuing on its nuclear path. Iran claims its nuclear project is peaceful, but threatens to pull out of the nonproliferation pact if it the UN asks it freeze its activity. To shore up its point, Iran is testing its new Shahab 3 missile with a range of 810 miles. US ally Pakistan exposed and then wholly pardoned of wrong-doing its chief nuclear scientist for being the major source of nuclear proliferation. Meanwhile South Korea has secretly enriched plutonium, and the U.S. has announced a plan to close down bases in Germany.
In light of this global repositioning and these unseasonable proliferation threats, American power will have a new face over the next ten or so years. America already enjoys a diminished standing in the world as a moral beacon while Europe's growing internal consolidation may lesson the U.S.'s ability to divide and conquer through rewards and punishments in trade policy.
The post-Second World War arrangements are shifting to something new, and no one knows quite yet which alliances will stand and which threats are to be taken seriously. It is difficult to imagine states today exercising so banal an activity as a land-grab. The global response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait put an end to that, at least for now. What are nuclear weapons for, then? They are ugly holdovers from when politics meant something besides shifting the terms of trade in one's own favor. They have outlived their moment, but they remain, potentially to shift politics back to its former place: of decisively differentiating friend from foe. It seems that today both catastrophic accident and non-state actors pose a worse threat to the smooth functioning of global capital flows and markets than ever before.
In any event, the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive war gives no one but Britain the confidence to partner with the U.S. The same preemptive powers domestically under the Patriot Act has the corollary effect, where patriotism today can only mean playing watch-dog to government abuses. Putin in Russia has been exercising the pleasures of arbitrary power. One wonders if Bush regrets his comments from a few years ago, that he and Putin understood one another at a deep, personal level.
Per a June Supreme Court ruling, so-called "enemy combatants" outside the range of the Geneva Conventions held by the U.S. in its piece of Cuba, Guantánamo Bay, must be allowed to challenge their status, though it is not clear that such a challenge will be legitimate because the lawyers acting on behalf of the prisoners are U.S. soldiers. (A New Yorker write-up of one of these lawyers does give one confidence, but still, the situation seems structurally determined: the judges will rule, not the lawyers, and the judges are military.)
In any event, evading the Court's intent, the Pentagon has transferred 35 such prisoners in mid-September to Pakistan, where, we may be assured, CIA will have full access but less public scrutiny. The New York Times reports that others have been transferred to Morocco, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden and Britain, and soon others may go to Yemen and Saudi Arabia. 191 total have been transferred; 550 remain.
Yaser Hamdi, an American-Saudi held incommunicado for three years, was finally released without being charged, provided he accept deportation to Saudi Arabia and renounce his U.S. citizenship. What an embarrassment. Who wouldn't gladly give up citizenship to a government that jails him/her for three years without charge? This is not to say that Hamdi wasn't caught on the battlefield with the Taliban. He was, but a U.S. citizen found to fight with the enemy must be charged as a traitor and allowed competent legal representation. Since the government did not do that, well then, perhaps Hamdi told the truth from the beginning: that he did in fact attend a training camp in Afghanistan, that he did not understand what he was in for there, and that he was in the process of trying to leave when the U.S. invaded. If he is innocent, then he is innocent. If he is guilty, then charge him with a crime under the laws that he too falls under as a citizen.
Meanwhile in campaign stops, both Bush and his Vice President have intimated that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for the terrorists.
*****************
What all the above indicates is this: the war remains an issue.
Thinking Republicans won't vote for Kerry, but they lack confidence in Bush, too. This is particularly so because of Bush's reckless fiscal policies, but more so with his handling of the war.
When it comes time to check the box for President, these thinking Republicans will simply leave their ballots blank. The election of John Kerry will be determined by how many thinking Republicans there are. My guess is that there will be enough.
I don't envy the tasks ahead for John Kerry.