Kerry Isn't Gaining As Bush Is Tarnished

Normally, one would expect ever-fickle public opinion to flock to the president's rival, but apparently not this time.

Perhaps, because Kerry has made such a song and dance about his own military service in Vietnam, that it has backfired on him.

You'd have thought his 1971-72 allegations of American soldiers raping, torturing, slaughtering civilians in Vietnam might have encouraged an I-told-you-so response.

That's not happening. Americans seem increasingly uneasy about Kerry, even as support for Bush erodes.

Consequences of the prisoner debacle have hardly begun to resonate. Emotions and mythology collide, and reality gets confused.

Events inside notorious Abu Ghraib prison, scene of Saddam Hussein's butcher hooks and torture, are not Bush's doing, though he will be blamed.

Nor are they the fault of America's combat soldiers who, although far from saints, are rarely sadistic or gratuitously cruel and depraved.

What the outrages indicate is flaws in the military police and army prison system -- which soldiers hold in low and nervous esteem.

Sadistic treatment of our own soldiers in our own military prison are not unknown. And while there's no way the abuses inside Abu Ghraib prison can be justified, they also can't be compared to the torture and murder of when Saddam ruled.

That's small comfort.

Some of America's problems in Iraq today stem not because they are too tough and oppressive, but because they are too gentle and reluctant to exercise ruthless power [emphasis added].

Just as rubber bullets in Belfast or Jerusalem fail to deter zealous militants, so the reluctance of soldiers to shoot civilians fails to curb the violence directed at their presence.

It could be argued -- and is -- that the great error of President Bush in Iraq was not emulating what President Reagan did in Grenada when he invaded.

In Grenada, the goal was to prevent a communist take-over, not to impose a new government. The Americans did the job, somewhat crudely but effectively, and then left.

That Iraq is better off with Saddam gone, is not the point. In some ways, humiliating people is more resented than killing them.

Iraq is added evidence that the U.S. military is better at winning wars than winning peace. Americans enhance freedom but make poor jailers.

At this moment, in America, the feeling seems to be that while George Bush is disappointing, John Kerry would be worse as president.

But the election is six months away -- ample time for a hell of a lot of unexpected things to happen. And for incumbent politicians, when the "unexpected" happens, it's usually bad.

(Original article can be found at canoe.ca.)

Note: Peter Worthington canoe.ca