It won't go away, this argument that cannot be logically refuted. In case you didn't see Joe Biden on Meet the Press yesterday, here's a small taste of what he had to say:

John Kerry's going to end up as president of the United States, God willing, where he is going to have to tell the French and the Germans and the rest, "Get over it. You don't have George Bush as an excuse anymore. Move. Get moving."

And the fact of the matter is I see--from my perspective, Tim, trying to stand back from it is hard. I mean, I'm obviously partisan on this. But if you stand back from it, does anybody think there's any possibility in a second four years George Bush is going to be able to rally the world to help us carry the burdens on anything? I mean, I'm not being facetious. I see no reasonable prospect of that. John Kerry will. Now, maybe it won't all work out the way it's supposed to. It's the only hope we have, and we cannot carry this burden alone, and I don't mean just Iraq. You have to have international cooperation to deal with the big problems we're going to face, and they relate from terror all the way to HIV and infectious diseases to ethnic cleansing.

And the irony is, what frustrates me, is this president, God love him, has made us weaker than before. I was the guy, as you remember, that pushed the last president before him, Clinton, to get into Bosnia and Kosovo. I beat up and about the head everyone who would listen to get involved. Can you imagine after the way George Bush has handled Iraq, another Milosevic, Us being able to gain the support, Democrat or Republican president, to use force legitimately? I think he's--and we've got to restore that. We've got to restore our credibility. And I don't see how George Bush can do that.

However, no matter how obvious (and important) this argument may be to some of us, there are those who care not for international relations. There are folks among us who rely on quick messages and the sound-bite politics of naked self-interest. For these people I offer a censored lyric from one of American's most cherished musicals, Annie:

In ev'ry pot he said 'a chicken'
But Herbert Hoover he forgot
Not only don't we have the chicken
We ain't got the pot!