They may not be dupes of any bellicose mullah or Middle Eastern tyrant, but they are surely dupes of what we might call the United Nations mystique. Watching Kennedy and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Francois Kerry, rhapsodize on the United Nations' capacity to resolve violence in the Middle East suggests images of Neville Chamberlain praising the Munich agreement after the Germans roared into Poland -- though even stubborn Chamberlain was not that besotted.
The United Nations has already failed in Iraq. It does not want to be in Iraq. It is a corrupt collection of poseurs, many of whose functionaries have already been exposed as on the take from Saddam. While he was engaged in torture and aiding terrorists -- for instance, paying off suicide bombers in Israel -- these grafters and many Europeans were cashing in on the Iraq Oil for Food Program.
There is only one course available in Iraq for civilized nations: resolve and rough treatment for any of the brutes who oppose pacification of the country. Kennedy's Vietnam parallel does not exist. The Iraqi resistance is supported at best only by the radical mullahs of Iran and the terrorists of Islamofascism. They cannot summon the communist protagonists of the Cold War from Moscow and Beijing. Moreover, they have no negotiators to go off to Paris and nothing to negotiate.
President Bush's Jane Fonda is living in a fantasy, as is Kerry. The other day on National Public Radio, Kerry actually defended the Rev. Sadr, an outlaw accused of murdering another mullah, as a "legitimate voice" in Iraq. Then he backed off and said, "Well, let me ... change the term legitimate. It belongs to a voice -- because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment."
Yes, it is, and his galoots have also killed a score of American soldiers. Kennedy and Kerry are not doing much to build the morale of our troops abroad, but then they played the same role 30 years ago during the Vietnam War. Now there is a historic parallel to meditate on.