HOW HE SEES IT Kerry win would drain energy in war

By E. THOMAS McCLANAHAN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
One of the most riveting lines of John Kerry's 1971 testimony before the Senate was a question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Kerry was talking about Vietnam, but he has described the war in Iraq in similar terms, as a "mistake" or a "colossal error." Nevertheless, he expects voters to believe that if elected, he will persevere rather than cut and run.
Put another way, voters are being asked to elect a candidate who's willing to order men and women to die in a war he believes is a mistake.
Kerry's contradictory performance on Iraq shows why his election would instantly drain energy from the war on terror.
When it comes to national security, credibility is hard-won. It is built by convincing your adversaries they will pay a certain price should they attempt to do you harm.
U.S. credibility was squandered in the 1990s -- that innocent era before Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorist threat was viewed as a problem for diplomacy, intelligence and law enforcement.
Our commercial buildings, barracks, ships and embassies were bombed in a series of increasingly brazen attacks. We responded mainly with pinprick missile strikes.
In the case of Somalia, where 18 soldiers died in a firefight and American bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, we simply withdrew. That planted the most dangerous seed of all in the mind of Osama bin Laden.
"We believe America is much weaker than Russia," bin Laden said in an Al-Qaida recruiting video, "and our brothers who fought in Somalia told us they were astonished to observe how weak, impotent and cowardly the American soldier is."
Turning the tide
The attack on Afghanistan, followed by President Bush's invasion of Iraq despite so much foreign opposition, has done a great deal to turn the tide where it matters most -- in the mind of the enemy.
Those who characterize Bush as a reckless cowboy seem blind to the fact that when you're in a war, you want the other side to believe you're reckless and unpredictable and maybe even half-crazy. If the bad guys think the American president is reckless -- folks, that's a good thing.
A big part of winning a war is keeping the adversary up at night, worrying about what you're likely to do next. Americans have been doing that a lot for the last three years. We're better off when the bad guys are doing most of the worrying.
If Kerry is elected, he'll be tested in ways that Bush would never be, simply because the toughest tests of Bush's willingness to use power are already behind him.
Kerry calls Iraq a "diversion," but success is of strategic importance. It is essential that a model be planted in the Middle East -- an alternative that shouts to every Arab: Don't listen to those who claim you should have no voice in how you are governed.
The availability of an alternative is essential to any process of change. The rapid fall of the Soviet Union occurred in part because an alternative was available in the form of Boris Yeltsin, the elected president of Russia. By contrast, communism lives on in China, at least outwardly, in large part because no similar alternative has appeared there. An alternative to the current pattern of tyranny and oppression needs to take shape in the Middle East.
In 1975, during a break in negotiations with the North Vietnamese, a U.S. military officer conversed briefly with one of his North Vietnamese counterparts.
"You know," said the late Col. Harry Summers, "you never defeated us on the battlefield."
The Vietnamese paused for a moment.
"That may be so," he replied, "but it is also irrelevant."
Bush believes victory is not merely possible but imperative. Kerry clearly does not, and does not deserve to be elected president.
XE. Thomas McClanahan is an editorial writer and columnist for The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.