Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Kerry's faqntasy land

Diane West:

...John Kerry has joined this exclusive club of presidential candidates who reveal a memorably shocking failure to grasp not just realpolitik, but just plain reality. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars — an appearance fraught with historical irony given Mr. Kerry's former role as spokesman for the now-defunct Vietnam Veterans Against the War — John Kerry let fly a foreign-policy gaffe of considerable heft.
In repeating his customary critique of Mr. Bush for not having garnered international support for the war in Iraq — as usual, dismissing the sacrifices of Great Britain, Poland, Italy and others — Mr. Kerry stated: "Every Arab country has a stake in not having a failed Iraq, but they're not at the table. Every European country has a stake in not having a failed Iraq, in not having a civil war, but they're not at the table." Which is to say, in Mr. Kerry's world, every country, European and Arab alike, would sit down to Iraqi stakes at his White House table. (No word on seating arrangements for African, Asian and Latin American countries.) I can hear it now: "Let's have some more of that American Way," says France. "Pass the women's rights," says Saudi Arabia, "and let's hear it for religious freedom in Iraq." "More tolerance and free elections," say Syria and Egypt.
Having very recently considered France's treacherous opposition to American victory in the Middle East from its place at the head of the anti-American "Eurabian" bloc, I'm going to give the Euro half of Mr. Kerry's extremely troubling declaration a pass. Besides, it is also true that some European countries do indeed root for a democratic Iraq, which is why they are assisting us already.
That leaves Mr. Kerry's Arab blooper. "Every Arab country has a stake in not having a failed Iraq," he says. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ... no, they don't. In saying so, Mr. Kerry has revealed a dangerous myopia. In his hazy, rosy vision, nothing would please the dictatorships of the Middle East more — from Syria's Ba'athist regime, to Saudi Arabia's sharia-based monarchy, to Egypt's de facto police state, to Iran's non-Arab, proto-nuclear mullah-ocracy — than to see religious liberty, legal equality and a host of other freedoms flourish in a tolerant, democratic Iraq. Welcome to John Kerry's world. Too bad the rest of us don't live there.
The fact is, the Broader Middle East Initiative, the ambitious, status-quo-busting Bush plan to expand liberty in the repressive, terror-exporting regimes of the Arab world — thus expanding the security of the United States and the rest of world — is hardly a crowd-pleaser in most Arab countries. Indeed, Mr. Bush's calls for reform and democracy echo chillingly through the palaces and throne rooms of despotic Arab regimes. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa probably summed it up best when, according to journalist Amir Taheri, he described the liberation of Iraq as "the opening of the gates of Hell." Interestingly enough, Mr. Taheri also writes that Mr. Moussa recently told a European diplomat visiting Cairo that Mr. Kerry would be able to "close those gates."