I have been waiting to get a large portion of time to formalize my thoughts on how the Democrats should approach the War on Terror. Realistically, this time is not going to come any time soon, so here goes.
First a word on opportunity costs: Bush is currently occupied responding to the Clarke story and dealing with Rice's refusal/inability to testify under oath. In my opinion Kerry has played this story well, refusing to comment directly on Clarke's allegations, but covering Clarke from Character assassination, and increasing the pressure on Rice/Bush for her to testify.
Eventually though, he will have to comment on what Clarke has said and this will be a crucial test of his campaign. Essentially in a month or so, Kerry will finally have the chance to do what the party nominated him for, namely challenge Bush on National Security.
If Kerry gets caught up in the details of what Clarke, Rice, Bush, et al. said, when they said it and why, he will provide Bush with the "out" that he is looking for. Bush can then chalk the entire episode up to politics and paint Kerry as an opportunist who would use the country's tragedy to win an election (yes I know this is the height of hypercritic projection, but its also likely to be at least partially effective).
Instead I suggest that Kerry allow the media (with the help of carefully placed surrogates and the blog community) to press the 911 story. What Kerry should respond with is a generalized critique of Bush administration's handling of the War on Terror.
This communication strategy could be framed into a general theme, Bush is soft on terror, and can not protect the country from terrorists. This general message should be supported by a finite set of themes, and each of these themes should be supported by concrete examples. Examples without a descriptive context are likely to be less effective than examples used as evidence to support themes, which in turn are used to support the idea that Bush is weak on terror. The themes should be developed around policy areas, and then over time traced back to the essential failure of leadership that led to these policy failures.
Here then are the themes I suggest in the order of their introduction:
1. Use of Surrogate fighters in place of US troops - Bush has placed the country at risk through using surrogates to do the work of US Soldiers. Gives some great opportunities for jingistic praise of the US Armed Forces on the lines of "Mr. Bush, why don't you trust our fighting men and women to defned our nation? Why won't you take the gloves off and let our fighting men and women do the job we trained them to do?"
Examples:
a. Tora Bora - We had the AQ core pinned down and then used surrogates (Northern Alliance) to do our work for us, leading to the escape of the entirety of the AQ, and Taliban leadership.
b. Currently in Pakistan/Afghanistan, we have good intelligence about the whereabouts of AQ, but we use surrogates (the Pakistani Army) in place of US troops to do our work for us. The result has been the escape of Key AQ leadership due to a bungled or infiltrated Pakastani effort. The counter to this is the argument that it is politically unfeasible to send US troops into Pakistan. Our counter is that this unfeasibility stems from our unjustified invasion of Iraq.
2. Lack of contingency planning - Establish the issue of Surrogate fighters, and let the Republicans formulate a response. As they get caught up in the details of defending themselves, move to the second major theme. Lack of flexible military options.
Examples:
a. In Afghanistan, when the war went quicker then expected, we had no plan formulated to deal with Tora Bora in the first place. This led to an unorganized and ad hoc response to one of the most crucial opportunities of the war.
b. In Iraq, we anticipated a conventional response and were not prepared for the contingency of Guerilla fighting. We are still struggling to this day to formulate an effective counterinsurgency response.
c. We planned to be treated as liberators in Iraq, when that did not happen we had no plan to deal with the chaos that unfolded.
3. Politicizing of intelligence - Of course from this theme the natural question to arise is why didn't we have good contingency planning? The response to this is the third theme, that intelligence, thoughtful military, and policy responses were subordinated to politics.
Examples:
a. The State Departments post-Iraq planning was jettisoned because of a political power struggle between Rumsfeld/Cheney, et al. and Powell.
b. General Shinseki's warning that the Iraqi occupation would take hundreds of thousands of troops was denigrated in the name of justifying the war.
c. Warnings about AQ before 9-11, and ideas to more vigorously pursue AQ after 9-11 were jettisoned because of willful political insistence on attacking Iraq.
d. Intelligence showing that Iraq was not as big of a threat as AQ (and this is the crucial phrasing, it is not that Iraq was not a threat - that sounds hollow, as Saddam certainly was a threat to someone if only those in Iraq - the point is that Iraq was not a threat to the US while AQ is) was ignored, and specious intelligence was exaggerated for political reasons.
4. Poor Priority Setting - Finally, the result of this politicizing of intelligence is poor decision making that has led to us being more at risk.
Examples:
a. The biggest, the loudest, the greatest is the war in Iraq. The message here is not that "liberating" the people of Iraq isn't a good thing, or even to debate the details that our liberation may not be all that its cracked up to be (witness the padlocking of a dissenting newspaper). The message is simply, the US has more important things to do. We are fighting in the President's words a "Global War on Terror" against AQ and Islamic fundamentalists. We have blown opportunities to capture their leadership in Tora Bora, and now last week in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the bulk of our military flexibility is tied down in Iraq, and the cost of that war is skyrocketing. Iraq posed no direct or imminent threat to us, but AQ certainly does. Imagine the soldiers and money devoted to Iraq "redeployed" - Well over $150 billion dollars in total used to make our cities and entry ports safer, well over 150,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan, and around the world to put the pressure on AQ.
b. Unilateralism is the second biggest example of poor priority setting. To gain short term temporary "advantage", the ability to go-it-alone in Iraq, we alienated our greatest allies in the war on terror.
c. Finally if ever asked about the Clarke issue, the point is not the lies, the deception, the transparent corruption (leave these to the press) the point is the poor choices prior to 9-11. Given the choice between focussing on terror and other issues, the Bush administration picked a fight with China, and formulated a fantasy Iraq war plan. Post 9-11, rather than taking the political heat and cleaning intelligence house, the Bush administration chose to use the war for political advantage, to pass Tax-cuts at home, and to attack Iraq abroad.
Overall message, the war on terror is difficult and far from over. More over, it requires important choices. Opportunity after opportunity this administration has made the wrong choices, and as a result our country is more at risk now than it was before 9-11. Bush is weak on terror, and we are at risk with another 4 years of him.