He, Gary Hart: The author of I, Che Guevara, gets frisky again

National Review, May 19, 2003 by John J. Miller

That doesn't exactly rate as a bold pronouncement. It's rather cautious -- even hedging. It also doesn't square with something Hart wrote in his 1998 book The Minuteman: "Why do we have 1.5 million men and women under arms with no major threat to our security?" One reason, of course, is to have the strength to knock off the Taliban -- or any other regime that harbors or aids terrorists.

Even now, Hart misunderstands the problem of terrorism. In a January speech, he actually laid the blame for 9/11 on missile defense rather than, say, Islamic radicalism. "While we poured enormous capital into national missile defense -- trying to hit a bullet with a bullet -- our enemies turned our own technology against us," he said. "Faith in technology handcuffed our imagination and lulled us to sleep." Hart seems to have forgotten that even its most fervent advocates have never viewed missile defense as a way to counter the likes of Osama bin Laden. It would be rather like saying increased airport security ought to protect Los Angeles from North Korean missiles.

Still, logic isn't really the point. At some level, Hart is still fighting the same old battles he fought with the Reagan administration. Moreover, like many liberals his age, Hart sees a lot of things through the lens of Vietnam -- including this spring's war against Saddam Hussein. "It cost us 50,000 American lives in Vietnam to learn the lesson that the American people must not be misled, lied to, or treated as incompetent on military engagements," he said earlier this year at the Council on Foreign Relations. The public deserves "a candid statement by the commander in chief regarding the probable costs in human lives and national treasure of its commitment" in Iraq.

The Bush administration did release some cost estimates for the war, but the president himself never gave a figure for casualties. Gary Hart did, however. "There will be, maybe, five [thousand] to 10,000 American casualties," he declared in November. (There were, in fact, 132 American deaths, and 32 British ones.) He foresaw bloody fighting in the streets of Baghdad. "If you saw Black Hawk Down, this is what we're looking at," he said in February. "And Mogadishu is a village compared to Baghdad. So transpose Black Hawk Down to the streets of a city the size of Paris."

It's hard to predict whether Hart really will run for president. The possibility first arose last fall. In January, on the Today show, he promised a decision "by March," and started raising money. When March came around, however, he said he would need until April, because of the war. This was not implausible, and Hart was still sounding like a candidate. "I'm better prepared to be president than anyone in this race," he insisted. Then the war came to the successful conclusion Hart did not expect. Nevertheless, in Iowa on April 8, Hart indicated that his announcement was still just a few days away. But then, on April 10, he applied the brakes. "I think now we're going to wait a little," he said, as if the waiting hadn't been going on for some time.