The Importance of Getting It

Lileks responds to Andrew Sullivan's hawkish endorsement of Kerry. Go read the whole thing, and forgive me for giving away the ending:

Our enemies gain when America aligns itself with the nations and institutions disinclined to see America win. They don't want us to lose, necessarily, but our clear triumphs are so damnably inconvenient. In any case, it’s not Bush’s war if he wins the election, is it? And if the French and moo-lahs and disaffected café-sitters in Cairo still think it’s Bush’s war after he wins 40 states, who gives a tin merde? Kerry can buy five minutes of good will by putting the screws to Israel, and reap the accolades of those who cannot wait for the inevitable flowering of liberal democracy in Arafat’s Instant Sea-Monkey Paradise (just add statehood!) but once those five minutes are up, and the Arab press starts pointing out Kerry’s Jewish roots, and the bombs go off again in Tel Aviv, does anyone think France will petition the Security Council to bomb Hezbollah camps in Syria?

I admit. I have a fantasy. Kerry wins. He’s having a summit with Tony Blair. In the middle of the conversation, Chirac calls up; Kerry excuses himself and has a brief chat about a new resolution to let French oil companies bid on reconstruction projects, and they have an amiable conversation in French. Kerry hangs up.

“Your predecessor,” Blair says, “spoke to him in English.”

“I know,” says President Kerry. “He couldn’t speak French.”

“He didn’t have to,” Blair notes. He gives a tight smile. And sighs. And gets down to explaining what now must be done.

If Tony B. ran against Kerry in this country, I wonder who'd win? I'd vote for him. Everything else aside, he gets it. He always has.