We are pleased that President George W. Bush achieved an impressive victory over Senator John Kerry--but we do not believe that the president received a clear mandate for conducting foreign policy. Indeed, it was unfortunate that there was no real foreign policy debate during the campaign--and this at a time when the United States must make fateful choices.
The president, understandably, was unwilling to acknowledge serious errors of judgment in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Yet Senator Kerry failed to offer a credible alternative. His attacks on administration policy, especially vis-à-vis Iraq, were more nitpicking than a serious evaluation of what went wrong and what lessons the United States should learn.
President Bush built a strong record on the defining issue of our time--fighting terrorism. He destroyed Al-Qaeda's base in Afghanistan, removing the Taliban from power. And regarding Iraq, there were only two feasible options. One was to offer Saddam a quid pro quo settlement--allowing him and his murderous regime to stay in power in return for verifiably giving up weapons of mass destruction and abandoning his regional pretensions. There was little constituency in the United States for such a course of action. The second was regime change. Senator Kerry himself had voted in 1998 for this option. The Clinton team (many of whom also served as advisors to the Kerry camp) opted for half-measures--conducting regular air strikes against Saddam, attempting (with declining success) to maintain strangulating sanctions, and plotting covert action. It was clear that these were not achieving their objective--while giving Saddam every incentive to strike back at the United States. So resolving the situation once and for all by ending the Saddam regime seemed to be a more prudent solution. One need not be a neoconservative to reach such a conclusion.
