Politics Doesn't Stop At The Water's Edge.

Natan Sharansky makes a plea for a bipartisan war strategy against terror in today's Wall Street Journal online.

"The enemies of freedom must know that the commitment of the world's lone superpower to help expand freedom beyond its borders will not depend on the results of the next election.

Just as success in winning past global conflicts depended on forging a broad coalition that stretched across party and ideological lines, success in using the advance of democracy to win the war on terror will depend on building and maintaining a wide consensus of support." (Here.)

Good advice, but don't hold your breath waiting on it to be followed.

Spreading democracy to fight terrorism cannot become a bipartisan strategy in this political climate, at least not under this President and not with Democrats today. Most Democrats don't even believe it is a war strategy in the first place. They believe President Bush's argument for democratizing the Middle East is an after the fact excuse he invented when the President's other reasons for liberating Iraq were exposed as lies.

It is partly Bush's fault that the country is so divided on the war. As Sharansky argues, the President has not done a very good job at selling his policy. But Democrats have mocked Bush's campaign promise to be a "uniter not a divider" since the day he made it. The fact is, too many of them just don't want to be united.

-tdr