COALITION BUILDING 101

Good thing John Kerry isn’t interviewing for a job as a head football coach. When interviewing for a job with a perennial powerhouse and current Super Bowl Champ, Kerry would no doubt boast that, if hired, he could bring in a couple of guys to take up the slack for what he believes is an under-manned World Championship team. Well, needless to say a guy who thinks that the Packers play at Lambert Field isn’t going to be interviewing for a head football coaching job any time soon.

Kerry is, however, interviewing for the job as Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces. The same forces which have crushed two tyrannical regimes and are now locked in mortal combat with the insurgent remnants of those regimes. Part of Kerry’s stated solution to battling these insurgents is to broaden the international coalition of the willing – fair enough.

So, if your stated goal is to broaden the coalition, how much sense does it make to disrespect those countries already participating in the coalition – calling them “window dressing”, “bribed”, “coerced”, “paid off” etc. etc.? It seem to me that if you are interested in broadening the coalition, the first place to start is by heaping great praise and honor on the coalition’s charter members – solidify the base then add to it.

Kerry’s counterintuitive plan is to trash the very counties who have done the heavy lifting to date while hoping to replacing them with French, German and Russian troops. Is this the guy we want running our foreign policy? The question Kerry must be made to answer is: “Given the recalcitrant nature of these countries toward U.S. interests, how much of America’s sovereignty, treasure and leadership are you willing to bargain away for their participation in the war on terror?”

UPDATE: Thurs debate LEHRER: Mr. President, new question. Two minutes. Does the Iraq experience make it more likely or less likely that you would take the United States into another preemptive military action?

KERRY: If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of [United Nations] resolution [sic], to sit down with those leaders, say, What do you need, what do you need now, how much more will it take to get you to join us?

This in addition to Kerry’s “global test”, and giving the Iranians nuclear fuel, while freezing our own nuclear development, makes it clear that a Kerry presidency would pretty much sell “our” farm to the French, Germans and Kofi Annan just to appear to be an internationalist.