Kerry drives deep into Bush's territory on Iraq, but settles for field goal

■"In Harshest Critique Yet, Kerry Attacks Bush Over War in Iraq: President Answers With Quick and Sharp Rebuke," by Jodi Wilgoren and Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, 21 September 2004, p. A1.

Kerry lands all the right body blows in his critique. What America needs to do immediately is repair its alliances, train Iraqi security forces, make a huge and concerted effort to reconstruct Iraq's infrastructure, and make sure the elections there happen on time in January.

Problem is, Bush's counter is that he's doing exactly all those things, and that it took Kerry until just 43 days before the election to come to the same conclusion.

Kerry's problem is that he's right, but Bush is right too, so Kerry is left with the only argument he has: I'll do a better job. Doing that better job is seeing the connection between those four points: We need to cut the deals with other Core pillars in order to get them to join our peacekeeping efforts in Iraq big-time, plus get them to pony up a lot more reconstruction money. A firm commitment not just from Europe on these two points, but from eastern, New Core pillars like Russia, India and China would go a long way to demonstrating resolve, de-Occidentalizing the coalition's skin tone, and seeding strategic despair among the forces of disconnectedness currently operating within Iraq.

What Kerry is not mentioning yet, and he should, is what those deals would necessarily be, noting that most of these states wouldóin effectócharge his administration less than they're going to charge a re-elected Bush administration. If he did mention those deals, he probably sound a lot of positive notes with an electorate that's awfully nervous about America's plummeting standing in the global community.

Most of these deals would cost Kerry special interest votes, but they would show a vision he currently lacks, as does Bush. So America would need to reverse itself on a lot of treaty stances the Bush administration undertook in its first term, and it would have to scale back things like planning for a regional missile defense system in Asia, or God forbid, making Pakistan a "major, non-NATO ally" over India's protests. We'd have to support Russia's bid to join the WTO, get more say in NATO, and ultimately join the EU. We'd have to find a way to describe a Kyoto Treaty we could sign, as well as a Doha Development Round treaty we could support in the WTOóone that would drastically slash our ag protectionism.

Yes, America would suffer economic adjustments across the dial, but ask yourself, wouldn't those changes be worth it in the end, if we could get Core-wide support for an effort to transform the Middle East and connect those societies up far more broadly to the global economy? Or do you think transnational terrorism and hatred of America inside the Gap is going to go away if we kill enough terrorists and put up enough walls between our good life and all the pain and suffering trapped inside there?

So you tell what the hard choices are.