Another Dead-Easy To-Do List

The Seven Eight Labors of the United States of America:

1. Crush Al Qaeda.


2. Pacify Iraq.


3. Block Iran's nuclear ambitions.


4. Stabilize Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.


5. Restart the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis.


6. Maintain the security of the world's oil supply.


7. Push Arab leaders to reform without leaving them vulnerable to power grabs by terrorist fanatics.


8. And do all this while making more friends for the United States in a region where most people dislike or even hate us.

Walter Russell Mead—Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in US Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk (Knopf)—offered this to-do list in a review of the 9/11 Commission Report in the Boston Globe (August 29, 2004). These eight items should be the substance of the foreign policy debate between W and John Kerry. Give 'em the list in advance. Let 'em prepare. Then, hold 'em to this list of eight tasks as they tell us how they would lead this country to accomplish this foreign policy agenda. No more blather. No more flip-flopping on the so-called war on terror. I am afraid that neither W nor John Kerry could summon up a cogent plan for even one of the items, let alone all eight. We are—in the words of Bush 41—in deep doo-doo. If this is (fair & balanced) punditry, so be it.