Here’s a thoughtful piece by M.J. Rosenberg at the Israel Policy Forum. (Thanks to Eric Alterman for alerting us to it.) This idea should be Kerry’s answer to what he would do about the Iraq War. Bring about a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis and the U.S. will go a long way to proving to Iraqis that we are on their side, that we want for them what we want for the Palestinians.

[Former Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin knew that Israel’s survival was not threatened by its immediate neighbors. The peace treaty signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin was holding and the Israeli-Egyptian border was calm. Even without a peace treaty, Jordan and Israel had peaceful relations. His emissaries to Damascus told him that a deal with Syria was within reach. As for the Palestinians, they had no significant military capacity.

Accordingly, Rabin’s primary concern was over Israel’s increasing vulnerability to nuclear, biological, or chemical attack from Iran or Iraq or Islamic militants. It wasn’t the immediate circle of nations surrounding Israel that worried Rabin. It was the secondary circle — and heavily armed killers both in the region and outside.

Achieving peace with the Palestinians was part of Rabin’s strategy for neutralizing those threats. Once Israelis and Palestinians were at peace the extremists would lose their pretext for holy war against Israel; the fanatics would not be able to credibly exploit Palestinian grievances to rally support and enlist more terrorists. The central (although not sole) grievance of the Islamic world would dry up.

Those of us in the pro-Israel community may not like to admit it but the Palestinian issue remains, after 56 years, the only grievance against the West that all Islamic radicals share. Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs ruling Iran did not agree on much. But they agreed on Palestine. And, whether or not one believes Al Qaeda and the former Iraqi regime were in cahoots, one thing is certain: they both used the Palestinians as a justification of terror and hate. Osama Bin Laden has cited the Palestinian issue as a pretext since his career in terror began.

The press, led by The Washington Post reporter married to a GOP operative — Howard Kurtz, continue to focus on the authenticity of the documents used in the CBS story about Bush’s National Guard shenanigans instead of the charges that with increasing veracity seem to be true.

Even the Dallas Morning News, a Bush loving newspaper, leads its story about the Guard secretary who poses as a document expert in a way that confirms the charges.

The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard officer who supposedly wrote memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake but that they reflect documents that once existed (emphasis added).

And Nick Kristoff relates a Harvard professor’s recollection of a conversation he had with the preppy Bush.

One fall day in 1973, when Mr. Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Mr. Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.

“He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list,” recalls Professor Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Professor Tsurumi says he next asked Mr. Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. “He said he’d gotten an early honorable discharge,” Professor Tsurumi recalls. “I said, ‘How did you manage that?’ “

“He said, oh, his daddy had a good friend,” Mr. Tsurumi said. “Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it.”

There’s more good stuff in the column. It’s worth a read.

There’s also this:

Does any of this matter? What troubles me is less Mr. Bush’s advantage three decades ago and more his denial today. Mr. Bush’s own route to avoid the draft underscores the disparities in America, yet his policies seem based on a kind of social Darwinism in which the successful make their own opportunities. His tax cuts and entire outlook seem rooted in ideas not of noblesse oblige, but of noblesse entitlement

Yes, but there’s something else that troubles me. It seems awhile back the GOP was saying it wasn’t that a certain president had sex with an intern, but that he lied about it, and as Josh Marshall points out Bush (surprise!) is less than honest.

We’re never going to stop the rich getting special favors, especially when it comes to fighting wars. But Bush lied about it. And that’s what concerns the GOP. Right?

While overall, the “Analysis” piece cited below has merit, it’s interesting to note the different take on Colin Powell’s response to Putin’s grab for power. The reporters Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright state, “While Bush administration officials, such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, quickly raised questions yesterday about whether Putin’s action will strangle democracy in Russia…,” the Post’s editorial says,

THE BOLDNESS of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Russian democracy in the past few days ought to have been galvanizing to a U.S. president who has made the defense of freedom the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. Instead, the abrupt announcement by the Russian president that he intended to combat terrorism by abolishing elections for governors, and eliminating local elections for individual members of parliament, has been greeted with confused, contradictory and timid murmurings from the State Department and the White House. Distressed Russian politicians described Mr. Putin’s act as “a constitutional coup d’état” and “a step toward dictatorship.” Yet not until yesterday did Secretary of State Colin L. Powell speak out, and then only to understate the obvious (emphasis added): Russia, he observed, “is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms.”

Which is it: quick or a day late and a dollar short?

The characterization is an example of editorializing in articles. The characterization of Powell’s response is editorializing, whether it’s in an editorial or an article. And I’m not sure you can avoid it, but please members of the press, don’t deny it.

The Washington Post is to be commended for another in a series of “Analysis” pieces, this one about Bush’s agenda for democracy.

Bush wants to portray the Iraqi war as one that’s designed to spread democracy, but in fact, he turns his back on democracy when it suits him.

While Bush administration officials, such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, quickly raised questions yesterday about whether Putin’s action will strangle democracy in Russia, outside experts said the administration’s gentle handling of Putin stands in stark contrast to the president’s repeated pledges to promote democracy and freedom around the world.

“Russia is one of the leading examples of how the war on terrorism has put the U.S. in a contradictory position in the world,” said Thomas Carothers, senior associate and head of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “On the one hand, the U.S. is pulling back from democracy with needed security allies who are less than democratic, while simultaneously calling for the U.S. to push for democratic transformations in other parts of the world.”

Rhetorically, Bush has made the promotion of democracy, especially in the Middle East, a central theme of his administration. “This young century will be liberty’s century,” Bush said last month at the Republican National Convention. “By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world.”

Last year, in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush criticized past administrations for turning a blind eye to autocratic governments in the Middle East. “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,” Bush said.

But, with only tentative and belated exceptions, mostly involving Powell, the Bush administration has remained largely silent as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has slowly dismantled democratic institutions, including taking over or closing all independent national television channels, establishing dominance of both houses of parliament, reasserting control over the country’s huge energy industry and jailing or driving into exile business tycoons who have defied him.

Kerry hasn’t made spreading democracy a central theme of his campaign, and yesterday he criticized Bush’s looking away from Putin’s increasing consolidating of power.

The Post’s piece uses the GOP’s own words against the Bush blind eye.

Bush came into office deeply critical of President Bill Clinton’s reliance on his relationship with Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. “With weak and wavering policies toward Russia, the administration has diverted its gaze from corruption at the top of the Russian government, the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya, and the export of dangerous Russian technologies to Iran and elsewhere,” the GOP party platform declared in 2000.

There are, of course, more examples that Kerry could point to of the disconnect between Bush’s rhetoric about spreading democracy and his actions – or lack of them: Sudan , Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Egypt, etc. Let’s hope his ever increasing circle of handlers can figure out how to play this – and for more than 24 hours. That seems to be the greatest liability of the Kerry communications efforts. They harp on a different message every day, with no consistency and hence no sticking power. Even Kerry’s shorter statements seems to wander all over the place.

Update: Kevin Drum cites the Kagan op-ed piece this morning.

Click on photo for larger image.

”This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up” against Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

Would that be this war that we’re winning?

Paramedics and residents picked up body parts scattered across the street and put them into boxes. Anguished men lifted charred bodies and lay them gently on stretchers.

Two good posts today from Josh Marshall at Talking Points.

One addresses the “flypaper theory” of why Iraq was a good idea. But the point he makes that Kerry can’t seem to articulate is this: “…the notion that there are a finite number of ‘terrorists’ who we can kill and be done with.”

What puzzles me is people saying that every terrorist we kill makes us safer. Not if it creates two more. Bush likes to brag that three-quarters of the Al Qaeda leadership have been killed or captured. Yes, but they probably all have been replaced. They’ve had three years to rebuild their network and will likely have many more years as we stay bogged down in Iraq.

The other post Marshall has is about what Iraq has become and how that confoundedly helps Bush. Kerry has been unable to articulate a different policy. Indeed, we are in a position now that we must see it through and nobody knows how we make it succeed. Certainly Bush can’t. U.S. casualties are rising. Many more areas of Iraq are now controlled by insurgents. How does Bush get a pass? He has no clear plan to get our troops out. And the most important matter is this: Why do we want to reward the guy who got us into this fiasco in the first place? If nothing else, he needs to be replaced because if he could screw this up so bad, what will he screw up next?

Garrison Keillor says “we’re not in Lake Wobegone anymore.”

In yet another example today of the Bushies attempt to censor news, the administration called NBC to “discourage” them from airing interviews with Kitty Kelley about her new book critical of the Bush family.

Now how exactly did they discourage them? And what do you think the consequences will be if NBC moves forward with the interviews? Recall that CBS caved to the administration when the network refused to air MoveOn’s ad about Bush’s policies saddling our children with debt. Isn’t it telling that such an ad would be censored when the Swift Boat Vets ads were not. Let’s see how NBC reacts.