Questions for Kerry

Great article over at The New Republic by editor-in-chief Martin Peretz entitled QUESTIONS FOR JOHN KERRY. Us and Them. Please read the whole thing but here are a few choice quotes:

How would John Kerry have dealt with Saddam? He has told us Saddam needed to be "confronted." But the word itself--which implies that the United States could have overthrown Saddam without using military force--tells us what we need to know. Had the United States and our allies not embarked on this war, the Iraqi mass murderer would still be in power. And, were international sanctions gone, as they soon would have been thanks to Russia and France, he would have been on his way back to having and deploying weapons of mass destruction. And the senator from Massachusetts would not have raised his voice.
[ . . .]

When I listen to John Kerry speak about the United Nations, I recall myself in a grade-school classroom in New York 55 years ago. At the front was hung a banner with a map of the Earth on a pale blue cloth--the organization's flag. The legend underneath reads, the world's last best hope. This would now be a macabre joke. The United Nations is bloated and corrupt, and its putrescence extends to the secretary-general's very family and his inner office. Were its headquarters located in Lagos or Beijing, it would disappear because no one would come.

John Kerry speaks, not unfairly, of George W. Bush's habits of denial. But Kerry himself is in denial. He is in denial about the United Nations. He is in denial about the Australian election that returned to office for an unprecedented fourth term its prime minister who has been, with his country, a pillar of the Iraq coalition. He is in denial about Japan, whose government, unlike Germany's and France's, does not carp at the United States. He is in denial about Afghanistan, where, for the first time in history, men and women, riding on donkeys and walking barefoot across great distances, have exercised the right to choose those who govern them. He is in denial about Iraq itself. The Jordanian daily Al Ra'i recently called Moqtada Al Sadr's apparent retreat from armed struggle "a farewell to arms" that is as politically significant as the establishment of the provisional authority. Has Kerry come close to recognizing this? Has he acknowledged that the Bush administration has negotiated with NATO a plan to send, starting in November, up to 3,000 soldiers to train Iraqi troops? These soldiers will be under the command of General David Petraeus, who is mustering the military might and political will to retake much of the Sunni triangle. Many Iraqis now have second thoughts about opposing the coalition. Even the BBC has said as much. But Kerry hasn't.