Andrew Sullivan is taking National Review's editors to task for balking at Iraq in the wake of April's troubling two weeks, and well he should. I disagree with a few of his points, particularly his lingering consternation over early postwar looting (in fact, a "realist" would recognize that the first weeks of every modern, postwar democratization has begun that unfortunate way), but elsewhere he's on point. His most striking statement is this:

the perceived difficulty of that transition — and the immense dangers of trying to achieve it — were outweighed by the gathering national security threat that surging Islamo-fascism, Al Qaeda-style terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction could pose to the West as a whole. None of our options, in other words, were pretty. But we had learned on September 11 that mere observation and pin-prick attempts to stymie discrete terrorist operations could not shield us from devastating attack. In that context, the Iraq gamble — and it was a gamble — was regarded as one worth taking.

...There are times when ideological movements have to be confronted ideologically — and Islamo-fascism was and is just such a movement. This recognition doesn't junk realist conservative thought; but it provides an essential complement. Blind realism is no realism at all.

Blind realism is a fashionable sort of pessimism. Now, how does what Sullivan has written — a double-thick outline of Bush's stated, progressive objective for winning the war on terror — square with the underpinning philosophy that John Kerry offers for his hypothetical role as Commander-in-Chief? Tim Russert's Meet the Press this past Sunday gave us all we need to decide:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said yesterday that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action even as he pledged to remain committed to Iraq and to personally plead for international help in policing and rebuilding that nation.

"In order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law-enforcement cooperation in the world," the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Beautiful as buzzwords, but the shorthand of that statement is this: Organized terrorism has nothing to do with repressed societies, the repressive regimes themselves, or the number of these governments supporting terrorism as a matter of public policy; and it can be excised from a country without a fundamental cultural change. Under Kerry's theory, the Near East's dictators were minding their own business when terrorism spontaneously blinked into existence, are all eager to remove what they have previously enjoyed as politically expedient shunts, and — once active terror cells are destroyed — will settle into a kindler, gentler tyranny that never, ever creates or supports a domestic, fanatic cult of hatred and slaughter.

Kerry's dismissal of the ideological element of the war on terror is denial of the conflict itself. His advice is the sort of perfectly gentlemanly, asethetically pleasing gossamer that led the free world astray for most of the last decade. Beware.

NO ALTERNATIVE: Belmont Club provides a blend of reports, op-eds and analysis on the Near East's culture of death. This is an enemy that can, if its dictatorial roots are left in place, indefinitely strike at us, only aided by time as technology improves. Remember, law enforcement had been the modus operandi for the decades before the World Trade Center attacks. I direct this to readers who know who they are: note how John Kerry and his supporters place their rhetorical weight on two pivotal events, September 11th and the decision to remove Saddam Hussein. The prevailing Democratic Party line is a mish-mash of accusations, innuendo and hindsight used not to develop a revolutionary world view but to damage political opponents. Listen to their obsession with conspiratorial speculation, a continual massaging of this bit or that bit in an attempt to implicate Bush — by now, most of it contradictory and unsupported by facts. (Notice how the White House almost always refrains from taking what would be an enormous opportunity in blaming the Clinton administration.) The beginning and second military campaign of this war are not guides for John Kerry and his party; they're a haven, a perch, along with the failure of American direction and will that is known as Vietnam. John Kerry may talk about the future, and what has been hailed for years as "progressive" may revel in scrabbling about history for a silver bullet; don't be fooled. This is reactionary ideology of the purest kind. They haven't learned from the past. They dwell in it. If you've begun to consider Bush's opponent because those around you talk a good game about our having been "misled," ask yourself (and them): what are Bush's opposition saying for themselves? And out of that paucity, how much of it is at odds with what we should all understand about our enemies?