ONE OF JOHN F. KERRY'S most damning accusations against President Bush is that he has made America a global pariah, thereby undercutting the international cooperation we need to win the war on terrorism. Kerry pledges to restore "America's respect and leadership so we don't have to go it alone in the world" and to "rebuild our alliances so we can get the terrorists before they get us."

Opinion polls show that a large number of Americans have bought this argument. The Pew Research Center recently found that 67 percent think the United States is less respected in the world than it used to be, and 43 percent think this is a major problem. It's easy to see why so many people would come to this conclusion, since surveys do show that U.S. popularity has declined in many countries during the past four years. Obviously it's better, all things being equal, to be liked than disliked. Kerry has a point when he accuses the Bush administration of squandering some opportunities to garner support abroad. The mishandling of Turkey before the Iraq war is a case in point.

Where Kerry is dead wrong, demonstrably wrong, is in suggesting that this unpopularity is taking a heavy toll on America's efforts to win the war on terrorism. Actually, by all indications, the United States is now getting significantly more cooperation in fighting terrorists than it ever did in the balmy days of Bill Clinton, who did all the sweet multilateral things that Kerry endorses--trying to broker an

Early last week, Pakistan announced the arrest of a dozen Islamist radicals who had been plotting attacks on the U.S. embassy and other targets. This comes shortly after the capture of some 25 other jihadists, including a computer expert, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, whose arrest led to the exposure of an al Qaeda cell in Britain that was said to be plotting attacks on New York, Newark, and Washington. Recall that until 9/11 Pakistan was a leading supporter of Islamist militants. Portions of its intelligence service and military maintain their links with these fanatics, but Islamabad has become much more responsive to U.S. concerns.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which turned a blind eye to Islamist terrorism in the 1990s, has been capturing and killing many leading al Qaeda members. In 2002, a Council on Foreign Relations task force rapped the Saudis for not cracking down on terrorist financing. This June, the task force released a follow-up study that found the Saudis, while still far from perfect, had greatly improved: "Saudi Arabia has taken important actions to disrupt domestic al Qaeda cells and has improved and increased tactical law enforcement and intelligence cooperation with the United States, though important questions of political will remain."

Europe, too, is offering unprecedented cooperation with the United States in the fight against terrorism, even though many Europeans disagree with U.S. actions in Iraq and elsewhere. Many European countries have passed tough laws that enable them to prosecute or expel supporters of terrorism even if they are not directly implicated in any attacks. French and German forces are serving alongside the U.S. military in Afghanistan and in the waters off Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Both France and Germany, along with many other countries, are also cooperating with the United States in the Proliferation Security Initiative designed to stop nuclear smuggling. This effort paid big dividends with the discovery last year that Abdul Khadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. The exposure of Libya's nuclear program led Muammar Qaddafi to renounce all support of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction--one of the biggest victories ever in the fight against nuclear proliferation.