OxBlog

# Posted 11:35 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

"AMERICA WILL NOT RUN": The President has come out with one response to Sunday's tragic loss of life. Howard Dean has come out with another:

"[The attack] weakens the position of the president and my Democratic opponents," said Dr. Dean, a Democratic contender who, as one of the most vocal critics of the war, cited the attack on a Chinook helicopter that took the lives of 16 American soldiers on Sunday. "There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war."

While Dean can argue with some validity that the war may have been a mistake given our failure to find a substantial cache of WMD, this sort of statement implies that because we made a mistake by going in, we should pull out right now regardless of the consequences. That is the kind of short-sighted thinking that makes it so hard for me to even consider supporting the Vermont governor's bid for Commander-in-Chief.

UPDATE: Brian Ulrich writes that this interpretation of what Dean said may be misleading. After all, Dean says on his website that

"That is, after all, now much more than a national security objective," he added. "It is a declaration of national purpose, written in the blood of our troops, and of the innocent on all sides who have perished."

His bullet point on American troops: "A democratic transition will take between 18 to 24 months, although troops should expect to be in Iraq for a longer period."

While Brian is right about Dean's official position, I think one gets a better sense of what Dean is about by listening to what he says in person. The pattern we tend to see with Howard Dean is that he says something embarrassing in person, e.g. his comment about "guessing" that Iraq is better off without Saddam, then has to correct himself by pointing out that his official position isn't what you would expect based on his prior statement. To me, this says a lot about his instincts on foreign policy. If Dean makes the transition from candidate to present, I think it is reasonable to expect that his instincts will be far more more important than his official positions.

Btw, it's probably worth pointing out that Dean's official statement is from April 9, which leads me to think that it isn't exactly the most important thing on his mind these days. So what I'm interested in seeing is whether Dean keeps talking about those-who-wouldn't-have-died while adjusting the 400 figure upwards as warranted. If so, it will become ever harder to believe that he is committed to rebuilding Iraq.

UPDATE: Brian has some comments on my response.

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