COP KILLERS FOR KERRY Well, maybe not quite for Senator Kerry, but against President Bush anyway. Mumia Abu-Jamal, the murderer of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner and a hero of the extreme left and the French, has an article in Workers World, the newspaper of the eponymous “independent Marxist” party, in which he declares that “President Bush’s cowboy-style diplomacy, and the slick way he promised to govern one way only to actually govern another, has grated on people, until many just want to see him quietly pass into retirement.” But Abu-Jamal is skeptical of Mr. Kerry’s central foreign-policy argument: One of Kerry’s selling points is his plan to appeal to Europe to give a hand to the American colonial project in Iraq, instead of the cold shoulder which the Bush regime has received since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But plans are one thing; obstacles, another. Nations don’t deal with other nations because they like or dislike a nation’s leader. They deal with others based on the guiding light of self-interest. As the British Viscount Palmerston (H.J.Temple, 1784-1865) intoned in the British House of Commons in 1848: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests, it is our duty to follow.” When, or if, a President Kerry speaks softly and perhaps in French, to Europeans, seeking an infusion of European troops into the rolling ruins of a burning Iraq, he will hear a polite yet firm response: “Pardon! Monsieur Kerry – mais non!” (“Sorry, Mr. Kerry – but no!”) Saying so makes us feel somewhat unclean, but Abu-Jamal is on to something. Of course his sympathies lie with those who oppose America; sounding like Patrick Buchanan, he says, “What the nation needs is not a new face, but a new policy – an anti-imperialist policy.” We, on the other hand, would like to see America pursue its own interests and ideals – with allies if possible, without them if necessary. That’s why we’re uneasy about Mr. Kerry: When the so-called allies say mais non, we’re not sure we trust him to do the right thing despite them.

SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS Martin Fackler, who served in Vietnam as a combat surgeon, writes in a Washington Times op-ed that he encountered servicemen who were eager for undeserved Purple Hearts: During my year in DaNang, a few combatants urged me to verify small abrasions as “wounds” so they could get a Purple Heart. Each freely admitted trying to acquire Purple Hearts as rapidly as possible to take advantage of the policy allowing those with three Purple Hearts to apply to leave Vietnam early. I refused them. But some went shopping for another opinion. Unfortunately, we had some antiwar physicians in Vietnam who were happy to become accomplices in these frauds. Most with valid Purple Hearts didn’t need to apply to leave Vietnam: The seriousness of their wounds demanded it. Was Senator Kerry “trying to acquire Purple Hearts”? “The highly unlikely occurrence of being wounded three times within 100 days, in the very beginning of a tour of duty, and all three wounds being so minor that none required hospitalization, would seem sufficient cause for further investigation,” opines Fackler. He calls on Mr. Kerry to release his medical records so that the public can “evaluate candidate Kerry’s qualifications and candor.”

MAN’S BEST IMAGINARY FRIEND “A new four-legged angel – actually a dog named ‘VC’ – has suddenly materialized surrounding Sen. John Kerry’s swift boat service in Vietnam,” reports the Washington Times’ John McCaslin. Actually, it hasn’t “suddenly materialized”; we noted it in March. But Mr. McCaslin says the evidence contradicts Mr. Kerry’s claim that his pooch was blown out of his boat by a mine: “No military records on Mr. Kerry’s Web site, which aides say is a complete accounting, mention a mine exploding under his boat or any dog. The only report of a mine detonating ‘near’ Mr. Kerry’s PCF 94 was March 13, 1969, when Mr. Kerry says he was injured and a man knocked overboard.”

This column is adapted from the Best of the Web, which is issued daily at OpinionJournal.com. ©2004 Dow Jones and Company Inc.