Kerry offers alternative on Iraq, terror

SEATTLE — Sen. John Kerry opened a two-week-long critique of the Bush administration's handling of national security on Thursday by accusing the president of undermining "the legacy of generations of American leadership" with a foreign policy that has abandoned the alliance-building of the post-World War II era.

In the first of a series of planned speeches, Kerry sought to present a clear alternative to Bush's approach to Iraq and the war on terrorism while pursuing the same central goal: destroying al-Qaida and its allies. "Let there be no doubt," he warned the terrorist group, "this country is united in its determination to destroy you."

He argued that Bush, by making military pre-emption the central doctrine of a new American foreign policy and employing it too quickly in Iraq, had ignored Theodore Roosevelt's warning that if a man "lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble."

"They looked to force before exhausting diplomacy," he said of the administration's national security team. "They bullied when they should have persuaded. They have gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst."

Kerry concluded, "In short, they have undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership, and that is what we must restore, and that is what I will restore."

Foreshadowing proposals that his campaign plans to announce next week, he promised to "modernize the world's most powerful military to meet the new threats" of the 21st century and to "free America from its dangerous dependence on Mideast oil." At the same time, he vowed he would confront Saudi Arabia, one of America's key suppliers for "financing and providing ideological support of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups."

Kerry's tone was more moderate than that of former Vice President Al Gore, who called Wednesday for the resignations of almost all of the top national security officials in the Bush White House, except for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Instead, Kerry attacked the competence of the entire administration, declaring that America's military should know he would never ask them "to fight a war without a plan to win the peace."