To gain peace, we have to fight, not run.

The hard work of building a new Middle East will be done by the Arabs, or it won't happen.



--David Ignatius
Washington Post

the anti-Bush wave . . . is a new force. Powerful technologies--the Web, TV and newspaper front pages--combine to amplify ancient human barbarities every day from the Sunni Triangle. . .Baghdad has become the blood-soaked, psychological equal of the Somme or Gettysburg. The sense grows daily among the American public that helping "them" is hopeless and "we" should pull back to our shores.

--Daniel Henninger
Wall Street Journal


As Daniel Henniger says, the U.S. is full of David Ignatius-types who say we have no business striving for democracy in the Middle East. Thomas Paine:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Why is militant Islam posing such a problem for today’s world? Among the several answers: 1) the humiliation Israel inflicted on Arabs in the wars of 1948, 1956, and 1967; 2) Israel’s efforts to frustrate creation of a viable Palestinian state; 3) the contrast between Israeli prosperity and high unemployment in the surrounding Arab countries; 4) the unrestrained assault of libertine Western culture, via television, movies, music, magazines, and the internet, on traditional Muslim values; 5) the vast and growing oil wealth of the Middle East, and the determination of the authorities who control that wealth to deflect hostility away from them and toward non-Muslims; 6) the asymmetrical ability of terrorists to wreak havoc on those who have much to lose, and who unlike terrorists are not willing to sacrifice their lives; 7) terrorism’s growing successes, beginning with Algeria in 1954-62, airline hijackings from 1968, the Munich Olympics in 1972, the virtual destruction of Lebanon in 1975-90, the Iranian revolution and occupation of U.S. Embassy Tehran in 1979, the successful effort to drive the U.S.S.R. from Afghanistan in 1979-89, assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, Hezbollah’s creation and subsequent destruction of the Beirut U.S. marine barracks in 1983, PLO hijacking the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985, the rise of Hamas, its control in Gaza and use of suicide bombers starting in 1987, the rise of Al-Qaeda in 1993-2001, Al-Qaeda’s success in Iraq, especially with IEDs, from 2003, the radicalization of Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons under Ahmadinejad from 2005, Hezbollah’s renewed attacks on Israel in 2006.

The answer to all this would seem to be U.S. support of more democracy, not less, more free market successes, not less, with both generating peace, not killing, peace that benefits Muslims more than the rest of us.