Imagine a place where allies are enemies and foes are partners, where strength is weakness and victory is defeat, and you begin to understand what life is like on Planet Kerry.

It is on this gaseous orb that America grovels before the United Nations in the hope that this international body that opposed the liberation of Iraq would be a fine partner to rebuild it. It is in this strange world that we find allies in the war on terrorism in countries that sponsor terrorism. And it is here that Israel’s construction of a fence separating its towns and cities from suicide bombers harms her national security.

On Planet Kerry, the war to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, a reckless pursuer of all manner of deadly weapons and an ardent supporter of all stripes of terrorists, endangered America’s security. By going to war without explicit U.N. approval “the administration has in effect invited other nations to invoke the same precedent to attack their adversaries, or to develop nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons to deter such an attack,” Mr. Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations on December 3 in his most comprehensive speech in this campaign season on national security. He might want to say that to Muammar Gadhafi, who began negotiations to forgo his nuclear weapons program shortly after the fall of Baghdad.

Later on in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, the senator from Massachusetts criticized the president for refusing “to conduct a realistic, nonconfrontational policy with Iran even where that may be possible.” So we are to believe that a wartime president ought not confront the first modern Islamic theocracy that pioneered the techniques of sabotage and terror employed by the fanatics attacking us now, and who today is bankrolling their efforts to emulate the 1979 revolution in Iraq.

No, as president, Mr. Kerry “will be prepared early-on to explore areas of mutual interest with Iran,” like curbing drug trafficking from Afghanistan and trading anti-Iranian fighters for Al Qaeda terrorists, as the Iranians proposed first in Geneva last spring and later through envoys this fall.

Planet Kerry is a place where the Israeli security fence is a “barrier to peace.” In fact, it is one of Israel’s many “provocative and counterproductive measures,” which, according to the frontrunner in the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, “only harm Israelis’ security over the long term.” He said those words, reminiscent of President Clinton’s Orwellian formulation that Palestinian suicide bombers were somehow attacking peace and not Jews, to an audience in October at the Arab American Institute.

Our democracy flourishes from genuine debate in election years on all matters of public policy, even issues vital to our national security. But this strength can be a weakness when the opposition doesn’t even know who our enemies are.

President Bush rightly understands that we are at war with Islamic terrorists and the tyrants who fund, arm, and harbor them. Proposing that America seek a “nonconfrontational” policy toward Iran, or oppose a fence to protect Israelis from terrorists, or seek the approval from the United Nations when that body can’t even agree on a definition of terrorism, shows that Senator Kerry clearly does not.