Kerry, the UN, and Iraq

Charles Krauthammer in today's Washington Post column asks some important questions about Kerry's mantra of going to the UN for help on Iraq; what does he mean? how would they help? and why would Iraqis want them?

Never has a more serious question received a more feckless answer. Going back to the U.N.: What does that mean? It cannot mean the General Assembly, which decides nothing. It must mean going back to the Security Council.

There are five permanent members. We are one. The British are already with us. So that leaves China, indifferent at best to our Middle East adventure, though generally hostile, and Russia, which has opposed the war from the very beginning. Moscow was so wedded to Saddam Hussein that it was doing everything it could to prevent an impartial Paul Volcker commission from investigating the corrupt oil-for-food program that enriched Hussein and, through kickbacks, hundreds of others in dozens of countries, including Russia.

That leaves . . . France. What does Kerry think France will do for us? Perhaps he sees himself and Teresa descending on Paris like Jack and Jackie in Camelot days. Does he really believe that if he grovels before Jacques Chirac in well-accented French, France will join us in a war that it has opposed from the beginning, that is now going badly, and that has moved Iraq out of the French sphere of influence and into the American?

All this points to the fact that Kerry really does not have a policy on Iraq, and this is why Bush is gaining in the polls despite all the negative news emanating from there. Americans understand that Kerry is simply not serious, and has no agenda or program; he is not running for something, but merely against Bush.