Political failures have a predictable trajectory and an identifiable history, and the Democrats' recent history at the polls and prospective fate in November could be the topic of an educational Ph.D. dissertation on that very topic.  Daniel Henninger provides an excellent start in his illuminating editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.

There is an inverse relationship between the length of time for a party out of power and its sense of desperation, especially in the case of Democrats who enjoyed--abused?--their power for over 40 years before losing it in 1994.  With each passing election since that time their desperation has grown, Vesuvius-like, until this year when their frustration as backbenchers is manifesting itself in a series of policy recommendations all of which are rhetorically framed in the negative. 

Indeed, whether it's DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Sens. Schumer and Durbin, or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, one rarely hears a positive platform articulated.  Rather, it's a full-throated and acerbic critique of the Bush Administration, which is the political equivalent of fingernails on the proverbial chalkboard.

Their shrill and smug polemics are particularly grating in the area of national security where one will rarely hear them attack al-Qaeda or the Islamofascists with the save fervor they do the Republicans.  It's in this area that the transparency of their motivation is incontestable because their desperation leads them to champion arguments that are clearly not in the best interest of our national security. 

An irony in this debacle is that as each of their myopic ideas hits the street and fails to resonate, which has been the pattern thus far, they search in progressively less likely places for political purchase which finds them arguing positions that border on the ridiculous. 

Paramount in that genus is their nostrums on Iraq which amount to nothing more than a formula for defeat, not just for the U.S. but for the entire Middle East.  Couple that with the ingeniously misguided leak of selective snapshots of the National Intelligence Estimate leaked to The New York Times, which had the left hyperventilating because it provided prima facie evidence that our military presence in Iraq became a magnet for the Islamic terrorists.

As Charles Krauthammer observed on Fox News this week, our presence on the Japanese islands in WWII also ignited an intense military response from the Japanese, so were those flawed decisions?  Or does one make decisions that are the most strategically advantageous and then anticipate and pre-emptively counter the enemy's probable response?

Political immolation is not a pleasant sight and watching the Democrats implode due to their nearly complete lack of understanding of how their political motivations undermine their policy recommendations, is no exception. 

A loyal opposition is critical to a sense of political balance and provides needed alternatives for the electorate.  However, the inability of the Democrats to mount a credible opposition will continue to consign them to the political hinterland, in this election and, unless they reform, in 2008 as well.

Today marks the 65th anniversary of Babi Yar, one of the most horrendous human slaughters in history.  On the morning of September 28, 1941, the Germans posted notices around the city of Kiev (Ukraine) mandating that all Jews report to a specified location with warm clothing, identification, and valuables, at 8 AM on the 29th.  The talk in the street was that this meant deportation--the talk was wrong.

Early on the morning of the 29th tens of thousands of Jews arrived, many hoping to secure preferred seats on the train.  However, instead of being ushered to the train they were directed through the gates of the Jewish cemetery, where they were told to leave their baggage. 

They were taken in groups of ten through a gauntlet of German soldiers with clubs:

Brutal blows, immediately drawing blood, descended on their heads...The soldiers kept yelling "Schnell, schnell," and they found ways of delivering harder blows in the more vulnerable places, the ribs, the stomach, and the groin.

After the mass of them had passed through the gauntlet they were led to a large open area overgrown with grass.  Here they were ordered to undress.  An ominous silence descended upon them as they trembled in fear.

Babi Yar is the name of a ravine in northwestern section of Kiev.  It was here they were lined up and machine guns cut them down--tens of thousands.  One survivor remembers that she

...looked down and my head swam, I seemed to be so high up.  I looked around and saw a sea of bodies covered in blood.

After the Jews were murdered the Germans brought thousands of Gypsies, patients from the local psychiatric hospital, and a variety of civilians, some were gassed and dumped in the ravine, others gunned down. 

By mid-1943 the Germans were losing the war and they were concerned about the evidence at Babi Yar, so they forced prisoners of a local camp to begin excavating the area and cremating the remains in piles of about 2,000, and used the headstones from the Jewish cemetery to crush the bones.

It's vital as we ponder the barbarity of Babi Yar that we recognize the nascent anti-Semitism that is evolving across the world, with its most malevolent manifestation in the person of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has sworn Israel's destruction. 

As Victor Davis Hanson makes plain in a timely editorial, the seething hatred that is descending upon our world in the form of Islamofascism has as its primary target the Jews.  Although the civilized world is rightly shocked by the savagery of Babi Yar, the new anti-Semitism is far more insidious and subtle, and that, as Hanson argues, affords it a kind of normalized status.  Indeed, for many in the ranks of Europe's academic elite and its presumably civilized counterparts around the globe, it's less of a hatred than a disdain, which began benignly enough as an indifference.

When viewed in the context of the demonstrable reticence of otherwise civilized nations to confront the evil in our midst there is every reason to believe that the gathering storm in the form of a nuclearized Iran is a threat we must take very seriously. 

The historians among us will recall how the world stood in stunned disbelief when it learned of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews.  That history has been replayed innumerable times, beginning with Adolf Hitler's speeches in the early 1930s in which he described with remarkable candor his ghastly intentions, and ending with the grim reality of the millions of souls who perished. 

As difficult as it may be to imagine, unless America and its allies stand up to Ahmadinejad, we may be the subject of a future generation's calumny for our inaction, because we're all that stands between him and his dark dream of a world without Israel.

For Americans who still require evidence that former President Clinton's track record on terrorism in the 1990s was anything other than a feckless failure, reading Richard Miniter's editorial in today's Wall Street Journal will convince all but the arch-liberals among us.

Miniter's analysis is balanced, evidence-based, and thorough, and his rhetorical restraint bolsters his conclusion:

Bill Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war.  Nor did he intuit that war requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force.

Some critics, even Brit Hume of Fox News, have been kinder in their analysis by arguing that it would have been contemporaneously difficult for Mr. Clinton to launch a full scale attack against known al-Qaeda assets because the nation, not to mention Congress was simply not convinced it was necessary. 

Yet, a major attack is not what most military analysts would have recommended.  Rather, merely recognizing the pattern that by 1996 had been clearly developing would have led someone less preoccupied with the political implication of his every decision to characterize the terrorist attacks as acts of war, not criminal behavior, which was Mr. Clinton's typical response.

Further, there were a number of high profile Congressional reports in the 1990s that made unequivocally clear that America was vulnerable to a major terrorist attack.  As Stephen Flynn writes on page 46 of his exceptionally well researched book, America the Vulnerable:  How Our Government is Failing to Protect us Against Terrorism:

A series of blue-ribbon panels commissioned by Congress, the Department of Defense, and the White House drafted comprehensive reports outlining the extent of our vulnerabilities to acts of terror.  In 1997, the congressionally mandated National Defense Panel concluded that the defense community must adapt to the emerging threat of asymmetric warfare directed at nonmilitary targets.  That same year, the president's Commission on National Critical Infrastructure Protection concluded that urgent attention must be give to the security conditions of every major sector from pipelines to the Internet.

How Mr. Clinton, who had an unabridged access to the vast array of intelligence related to the terrorist attacks against the U.S., from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to the many others on U.S. interests and facilities around the world in the 1990s could continued to deploy the FBI after each attack and not recognize that our Republic was under siege is nothing short of astounding.

This issue raises profound questions about presidential leadership and the nature of politics.  President Clinton's approach to every crisis was to analyze its potential for political exploitation with an eye to minimizing its potential for adverse fallout.  That he is the consummate politician is evident in his powerful oratory skills wherein he could convince nearly everyone of the sagacity and prudence of his decision, regardless of how unthoughtful or politically expeditious it was.

It's that juncture of values and principle that is the ultimate touchstone of presidential leadership, and although every president in history made serious errors in judgment, the great ones are remembered because history has vindicated their vision and judgment. 

Therefore, when we juxtapose Presidents Clinton and Bush, there is absolutely no question but that the former has the charm, the deft polemical skills, and the political ability to persuade skeptics of the wisdom of his thinking.  However, when it comes to judgment and the more profound matter of aligning one's principles with one's behavior, President Bush is the unambiguous winner.

Indeed, there is a plethora of evidence that Mr. Bush's decisions across the foreign policy spectrum have been categorically unpopular, both at home and abroad.  And, despite the fact that WMD have not thus far been found in Iraq, that nation is, in fact, a candidate, albeit a fledgling one, for democratic rule, which in the Middle East is something of a miracle.

President Bush's foreign policy has been unwavering but he has made adjustments when evidence persuades him of the need for a course correction.  What doesn't change is the principles and values that underwrite them.  He can be criticized for any number of flawed decisions, but you can be assured that he is acting with the long-term national security interests of the U.S. in mind, without concern for the political implications.

One cannot, with a straight face, say the same about Mr. Clinton, who is the very embodiment of political calculation and adroit manipulation, and, as his interview with Chris Wallace demonstrated, he is so preoccupied with his legacy that any hint of criticism ignites his infamous temper.

Some legacy.

In a prototypically liberal analysis, E.J. Dionne argues that President Bush doesn't have the kind of "silent majority" that was invoked by President Nixon as a rebuttal to Vietnam protesters.  He further argues that our problems in Iraq are due not to liberals but to the "civilians in a conservative administration," who find themselves "under increasing fire from leaders of the military and intelligence services for bad planning, flawed analysis and unrealistic expectations."  From there, Dionne predictably links Iraq's problems with the minuscule portion of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was leaked over the weekend.

There are legitimate criticisms of the president's execution of the war in Iraq, from insufficient boots on the ground to the complete lack of understanding of the post-invasion landscape.  That stated, there is a "chicken and egg" argument that renders summary judgments about the degree to which our military's presence has acted as a kind of magnet for Islamic terrorists difficult and therefore suspect.  But there is no question that Iraq is now the locus of untold thousands of sectarian savages bent upon disrupting the fledgling and fragile democratic process.  However, as much as the likes of Dionne would like us to believe it, that's not the complete picture.

First, comparisons of virtually any kind between Iraq and Vietnam are made only by those thoroughly engrossed in the game of political advantage and therefore they should be strongly encouraged to recuse themselves before causing further embarrassment.

Second, those with knowledge of the NIE have stated that the quotes and fragmented summaries are truly not representative of the entire report, and today President Bush has vowed to release it to make that very case. 

Most critical is that we must return to the fundamental facts in this war:  The undeniably positive results of toppling of Saddam momentarily aside, Iraq is unquestionably the focal point of a horrific sectarian struggle in the Middle East and therefore clearly defines what is at stake if we do anything other than commit to remaining there until the Iraqis can assume responsibility for their own security.

Although the liberals' appraisal of our setbacks and strategic flaws have political punch, they are completely academic and wholly beside the point because in the end we have no other choice but to keep the pressure on the Iraqis to stand up their military as expeditiously as possible so our troops can return home.

Indeed, there is not one American who wants us to remain there a moment longer than we must, but this is hardly the first time our troops have been in harms way during what appears to be a dispiriting and daunting war.  To wit, return to 1917 or 1943 when the outcomes of those horrendous wars were far from certain and American boys were being killed at heart-rending rates, and with no end in sight.

The difference between those wars and this one is that the goal was far more obvious and so the resolve to stay the course was unequivocal.  But the goal in Iraq, which is an integral part of our effort to at once degrade the Islamic extremists and to allow the chances for democratic rule in the Middle East to take root, are equally vital in our global effort to combat the extremists who are intent upon the destruction of the West.

President Bush and the Republicans must remain on the offensive by succinctly articulating how winning in Iraq is interdependent with the larger war against this stone-age evil, and must argue that when the Democrats try to isolate Iraq and define it as a failure for political purchase they are undermining our ability to fight the broader, longer-term war. 

That amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy because you can be certain their efforts are covered by al-Jazerra and the multitude of radical media outlets across the Islamic world--not to mention our mainstream media which is always prepared to faithfully report America's shortcomings, especially if they translate into criticisms of the Bush Administration.

That may sound harsh but during times of war we simply don't have the luxury to immunize against tough criticism people who constantly point out our failings but who have articulated no viable alternative policy.

When their resoluteness on national security is challenged the left reflexively responds that their patriotism is being questioned.  It's not about patriotism, it's about winning.

In an editorial in today's New York Post, Amir Taheri, one of the most astute Middle East critics, makes the case that negotiations generally, and sanctions specifically often have the unintended consequence of enhancing the chances of military confrontation.

He observes that Saddam was convinced that France and Russia's intransigence effectively guaranteed that a U.S. coalition would not invade Iraq and that negotiations and sanctions would continue into the distant future.  Now, in the case of Iran, French President Jacques Chirac has laid the political groundwork for repeating history, stating:

There will be no war against Iran.  Anything other than negotiations would be resolutely opposed by France.

Couple that with his other, equally diplomatically fatuous assertion:

Iran should not be asked to stop uranium enrichment as a precondition to negotiations.  And there is no sense to refer the Islamic Republic back to the Security Council.

Due to its support of yet another renegade regime, France is once again single-handedly crafting major diplomatic concessions that hobble the U.S. effort to isolate and force Iran to cease its uranium enrichment program prior to negotiations.

Negotiation is a fine art that presupposes more than a modicum of sound judgment, most critically, the ability to anticipate an adversary's responses to a variety of potential strategic moves.  The most successful negotiations, in particular, those on the battlefield of international affairs, feature an element of calculated transparency designed to telegraph consequences and thereby indirectly encourage a predetermined behavioral response, in large measure by discouraging all others.

Chirac is once again a priori establishing the ground rules that provide Iranian president Ahmadinejad with a set of preconditions to strengthen his negotiating hand long before the negotiations begin.  In the world of business that's tantamount to signaling one's absolute commitment to settle for an agreement that is less than favorable because one is unwilling to risk losing the deal entirely. 

Now Iran knows the end game and Ahmadinejad can simply reverse engineer the process to ensure he will never have to cease uranium enrichment, which puts him on an effective glide path to a nuclear weapon.

If their historical behavior is any predictor, we can expect the liberals here at home to align themselves with the U.N.  Indeed, President Bush has sufficient challenges on the domestic front to demonstrate that our nation is nominally seamless and united and France's strategic myopia only compounds his problems.

The result is that if negotiations and sanctions are fruitless it may truncate the diplomatic process and expedite the road to war, because the U.S. and its closest allies will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. 

That is one scenario that Ahmadinejad, like Saddam before him, may not have counted on, because he is currently so confident that our demoted status in the world arena would redound to him in terms of safeguarding his nation from attack. 

That is a credible argument, but only to a point because, as has been argued elsewhere in these columns, President Bush has been studying President Truman and the comparison between these two presidents, as students of history know, is compelling. 

Our post-invasion problems in Iraq notwithstanding, Mr. Bush clearly understands Iranian intentions and while it is likely that the Security Council will ultimately agree to a watered down set of sanctions, we can be assured that our president will make abundantly obvious the consequences for Iran's protracted defiance of the international community.

If we in the English speaking West feel embattled as we struggle against Islamic extremism--the latest and most lethal incarnation of tyranny--history proves that we are fully justified.  Reading Andrew Roberts' learned editorial in the UK Telegraph is a comforting balm against the interminable, bell jar pessimism emanating from our mainstream media.

Crafting a prism of pessimism is an effortless task in our age where tradition and principle are routinely maligned and depreciated.  Perhaps the perfect antidote, as Mr. Roberts argues, is to recognize that beneath our obligatory dark vision of the future is an historical subtext, a tacit but consensual confidence that we can graft onto our downtrodden civic framework. 

There is an abundance of evidence that strongly suggests that the West has again succumbed to the allure of the presumed equivalence of all nations, such that its nihilistic dream must inevitably be revisited, if only to again prove to another generation of skeptics that constitutional democracies are the best hope for mankind.

Lost in the left's misguided onslaught against traditional culture, which proved to be little more than a civically expensive exercise in reckless self-indulgence, was any recognition of the validity inherent in the time-tested values that carried this Republic through several wars, of both the military and civic variety.

Indeed, the left has been so consumed with its smug and self-styled thinking since WWII that it never paused to consider the civically untoward implications of its vision of a secularized world where the most prominent virtue is the corrosive argument of the moral equivalence of all nations.

For reasons that may only be divined by legions of psychiatrists or anthropologists at a time decades hence, some of our most advanced thinkers today seem utterly incapable of recognizing that the English-speaking people, along with their brethren in the newly emancipated lands of Eastern Europe, are the best hope for the forgotten multitudes under the tyrannical rule of despots in the Middle East.

The Islamic extremists, who are rapidly moving into mainstream Muslim thought, are gaining a disturbing credibility, from the Middle East to Indonesia.  The impact of our efforts in the military arena are inherently limited, and so we must look to that other battlefield, the one where ideas and values are at stake.

If we can demonstrate to that vast portion of the Muslim world that still listens to reason, that America represents the best approximation of universal values, that our stringent insistence upon individual freedoms and the rule of law are the best guarantors of happiness, we might win enough hearts to snuff the evil that seems to be growing unchecked among jihadists and moderates alike. 

There does not appear to be any other viable alternatives, and time is working against, not for us.

Although most Americans may have been disturbed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' remarks at the United Nations, there is evidence that his hard left, anti-American platform is just slightly ahead of the curve of our own leftist movement.

Indeed, political bellwethers are often difficult to divine in the mix of our rapid-paced, condensed news-cycle world.  When Mr. Chavez held up Noam Chomksy's Hegemony or Survival:  America's Quest for Global Dominance, Americans can be excused for not recognizing this atavistic, hard-left socialist who has been toiling for decades in well-deserved obscurity.  Mr. Chomsky's political philosophy is so anti-American, so corrosive to the principles championed by our Founding Fathers, one that holds mainstream, traditional Americans in such abysmally low esteem that Mr. Chavez' choice of him to characterize his special loathing for the U.S. could not have been more apposite.

For Chomsky, the soft left's unsavory belief in the moral equivalence of all nations is not sufficient.  Rather, he holds the most despicable, democratically regressive regimes in far higher esteem than he does America. 

Many dismiss him as an intellectual hack and a writer with remarkably poor skills in the use of the English language.  Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who has been a strong critic for Chomsky's anti-Israel positions, found all of this a tad overwrought:

People buy his books, but they don't read them, because Chomsky's one of the worst writers in the English language.  On issues of substance, he's had virtually no influence.

But, back to Mr. Chavez, whose radical politics may not be all that far off the mark of many liberals in America.  Julie Sweig, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has extensively studied this nascent anti-Americanism, observed:

In their inflammatory and provocative way, Chavez and the others are expressing a sentiment that is deeply resentful of the way the U.S. uses its power.

Indeed, Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America specialist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a leftist Washington think tank, noted:

People who say these guys are just the outliers are wrong.  They are saying things that many other leaders only think.

The use of proper use of power for the U.S. is a legitimate topic of debate because it highlights the nature of this nation's principles and the values that motivate its foreign policy.  To those on the left, both those of Chavez' ilk and many American liberals, those principles include the belief that democracy, individual rights, and the rule of law, enjoy no special place in the hierarchy of civic governance on the world stage.

That may seem a harsh or unfair judgment, but it is those very principles which when deployed in the pursuit of bringing social and economic freedoms to historically oppressed people that Mr. Chavez finds intolerable.  Underlying his and Chomsky's deep loathing of American might is a universal enmity for authority of any kind--save their own, of course--because it implies a value judgment concerning the relative worth of one system over another. 

Ironically, Chavez and his neo-lithic leftists are enthralled with such benighted nations as Castro's Cuba, where the notion of human rights is as foreign as it is taken for granted in America.  In response to this display of political hubris, U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, stated that it was "too bad President Chavez doesn't extend the same freedom of speech to the people of Venezuela."

For the height of irony and paradox, Mr. Chavez is lobbying aggressively for Venezuela to win the rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council next year, and those in the know believe he may have the necessary 128 country votes to prevail.

However, all of this actually bodes well for mainstream Americans, because with each passing year more of them move into the Republican camp and this kind of acerbic anti-Americanism will act as a kind of political accelerant to drive ever more of them into the conservatives' arms. 

Clarifying values and principles constitutes one of the most crucial functions of our political process and the strength of America's system of governance is drawn from its citizens' capacity to understand policy differences in order to make informed decisions. 

As we head towards the November elections, we should encourage more circus acts such as the one featured at the U.N. because it provides unsubtle evidence of the way in which the left derogates our Republic's democratic principles by criticizing the Bush Administration's hope that the Middle East may one day enjoy the form of government that Americans have for over two centuries.

It's a vital distinction and when coupled with the left's inbred reticence to project American power to defend its national security, it's also a winning strategy at the ballot box.

As Charles Krauthammer cogently argues in an editorial today, tolerance is a truly endangered virtue, because although we in the West have been inundated by the lessons of the left that demand it for everything save our own traditional values, it's a generosity not reciprocated by Muslim leaders.

Therefore, we're morally obliged to remain mute when Muslim extremists issue a death warrant for Pope Benedict XVI, which recalls the one they issued for Salmon Rusdie, both of which reflect an astounding double standard.  More critical is their unexamined moral culpability vis a vis the very religious beliefs for which their moderate brethren provide safe haven by arguing on their behalf that Islam is a peaceful religion.  Recall the adage, "By your actions, you will be judged."

The West's unilateral insistence upon an unconditional tolerance of Islam in all its inimical incarnations is the very height of moral cowardice, because it sacrifices our most potent cultural weapon--moral outrage--for the sake of political correctness.  Indeed, we're obliged to check our six-guns at the door while the radical jihadists enter with automatic weapons and scimitars ready to behead us.  As the threadbare idiomatic expression goes, something's wrong with this picture.

Those with intact historical memories will recall the unanimous outrage our nation expressed as Herr Hitler marched across Europe with a barbarity redolent of the Romans at Carthage.  Yet, as we gaze upon the unholy string of attacks by the Muslim jihadists, from the 1972 Munich attacks to the attack on our Marines in Beirut to the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the Khobar Towers, our East African embassies, the USS Cole, and 9/11--not to mention the numerous subsequent attacks around the globe--there is nothing akin to that unambiguous anger, that visceral determination to decimate our enemy, and that is our greatest weakness.

As has been argued in these columns, political will is the sine qua non of military victory, and unless we are unified and express our seething anger with one voice--sans our academic and media elites' proclivity to sanitize it--we will slowly, inevitably, lose the battle of ideas, and then the battle on the ground.

But it needn't unfold like that.  Implicit in tolerance, like all virtues, is the expectation that it is universally recognized and nominally observed.  But when one side is culturally obligated to unilaterally disarm it leaves them at a supreme disadvantage.  America must realize that we can and must chart our own future and that requires us to rewrite the rules of engagement to level the playing--or battle--field.

Not unlike the naive and ignorant among us who argue that we must use only civilized interrogation methods because if we don't the Islamic extremists won't reciprocate when they capture our military personnel, to cede operational power to an enemy who will only exploit it is no less stupid than to arm him with the military might to prevail in battle.

In short, we must rekindle that sense of collective outrage and express it in unequivocal and unapologetic terms, because to do anything less will degrade our chances for long-term victory in what is arguably the most challenging war this Republic has ever faced.

In a remarkably obtuse editorial in USA Today, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass) persuasively argues for the left's cowardly withdrawal from Iraq.  He itemizes the deaths, he laments the post-invasion mayhem, and question how we could sanction sending more troops.

As in any war, from the 3th century Punic Wars through our Revolutionary War and right up to Iraq, the formula for victory is ultimately always a matter of political will.  During the Second Punic War Rome demonstrated astounding will against the formidible Carthaginians which led them to a hard-won victory and established Rome as the uncontested super-power in the known world.  The same determination and vision is desperately needed for us in Iraq.

Committing a nation to war is never an easy decision, not only because lives are at stake but because the outcome is neither obvious nor inevitable.  The war in Iraq has been no exception and its unpredictable problems and setbacks have presented vexing and unique challenges.  However, not unlike every other war, once we've committed our blood and treasure, the word withdrawal--which is really "retreat"--should never be uttered because the enemy is listening and retreat is tantamount to cowardice, politically and militarily and will be exploited by our adversaries.

It's an axiomatic observation that the modern liberal sensibility loathes conflict and causalities more than it does the chance for victory.  To wit, President Clinton's antiseptic air campaign in the Balkans, his summary retreat from Somalia, and his incapacity to prosecute the war against North Korea on the battleground of diplomacy.

Enter President Bush for whom principle and adherence to traditional values are paramount.  He made the case for war in Iraq and received Congressional authority.  Now, three democratic elections later a level sectarian wholly unpredicted threatens to sabotage the chances for a rudimentary form of self-determination in Iraq.  It's at this fragile point that the true nature of victory--and retreat--must be candidly discussed to strengthen our resolve.

Retreat in battle is not only ignoble and unbecoming, it signals a profound inability to see through the present problems to a time when victory or some semblance of it is apparent. That's not only cowardly it reflects a lack of will to persevere when the odds seem long and one's patience is wearing thin.

There is no question but that the enemy smiles when they read an editorial such as Rep. McGovern's because they realize that retreat has a seductive allure for many on the left in America.  But the enemy is not only those in fighting in Iraq, it's Iran and Syria, who are on the sidelines praying--literally--that the U.S. leaves so they can bring Iraq down with their dark, stone-age vision of theocratic hegemony.  If that happens the Middle East will descend into a cauldron of civic misery with Iran salivating at the thought of eliminating Israel from the map.

For reasons that defy both logic and common sense, the left in America seems utterly unable to comprehend any of this and so they argue for retreat in the face of admittedly painful challenges in Iraq. 

One explanation is that political battles are looming in America and the Democrats generally and liberals in particular are frustrated and fatigued with being Congressional backbenchers.  With the goal of Congressional control in their cross hairs, they must craft a winning policy both for Iraq and in the war against the Islamic jihadists, but they haven't yet understood that regardless of how they sanitize it, withdrawal is synonymous with retreat and that word is not, nor has it ever been, in the American political lexicon.

It taxes the imagination to ponder the message delivered at the U.N. yesterday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but it's vital that we attempt to parse his utterances. 

His speech is best understood as the ideological equivalent of Hitler's Mein Kempf, because it is at once a manifesto and a political road map.  If there is a redeeming characteristic to his remarks it is that their unambiguous message of malignant motivation should be clear to those in the West who have minimized, obfuscated, or merely ignored his threats. 

He carefully characterizes Iran as the victim of a global scheme by hegemonic powers--read the U.S.--to arrogate to themselves the monopoly of nuclear power--read weapons--and concurrently questions how Israel was allowed to skirt the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

From there he explores, with absolute irony and paradox, such notions as justice, freedom, human rights, and the dignity of the individual.  He laces those ideas with references to God which anticipates his closing remarks.  A cursory glance at life in Iran betrays that his people live under the rule of a despot with no rights and a faltering economy.

He finishes with a defense of Iran's presumed right to nuclear technology--i.e., a bomb.  Although his argument has no credibility whatsoever, in our age where the moral equivalence of all nations reigns supreme it will be well received.  Indeed, the left has a well-documented affection for dictators, from Stalin to Castro, so Ahmadinejad is just another in a long line who is seeking equal footing with the imperial United States.

This Iranian president closed with a transparent reference to the Twelfth Imam and his allegedly impending return, who will "fill this world with justice and peace."

He demonstrated no equivocation about how he intends cast the Security Council as a discriminatory body without any legal right to target Iran for sanctions, and how Israel was was illegally allowed to circumvent the law to acquire nuclear weapons.

The MSM's characterization of Ahmadinejad's speech was predictable and they have provided him the necessary political cover to render his argument far more plausible than it warrants. 

Evil has, indeed, made meaningful advances in its attempt to recast itself as a credible and benign player on the world stage, worthy of the same legal considerations and international courtesies as constitutional Republics and democracies.

Therefore, the West in general and the United States specifically, is tasked with the duty to clarify this despot's intentions, to make the case that his goal is regional hegemony and the destruction of Israel.  Further, Iran's attempts to undermine the authority of the Security Council must be resisted and the use of sanctions as an intermediary step to force it to cease its uranium enrichment program unconditionally supported. 

We're at a critical crossroads where the moral confusion that is so evident in every aspect of our civic fabric must not be tolerated.  President Bush must stay on the offensive and argue, without apology or qualification, that democracy, freedom, and rule of law hang in the balance because if Iran is allowed to obtain a nuclear capability it will effectively rule the Middle East.

Ahmadinejad's speech is evidence that he is thoroughly convinced that the U.S. is substantially weakened and has lost the capacity to act because it is suffering from isolation and the disdain of many in Europe and at home.  It's a gamble that won't succeed but one with real credibility thanks to the unprincipled behavior of France, Russia, and China, and liberals in America.

Will the world awaken from its self-imposed slumber and begin to recognize what is at stake, or will it recoil from this nascent evil empire in the misguided hope it will magically dissipate?

No sooner had Pope Benedict XVI given his speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany than Islamic extremists worldwide condemned him and demanded everything from an apology to his death.

Whether they had read his complete remarks or not, this response highlights the core problem for anyone with a purportedly religious belief that concurrently advocates the murder of innocents.  The religious underpinnings of this argument is, ironically, exactly what the Pope was trying to use to kindle a dialogue.

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal provides the context necessary to understand the unique correlation between reason and belief; as the Pope noted:

The inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance, not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, also from that of world history...This convergence, with the subsequent addition the Roman heritage, created Europe. 

The delicate balance between reason and belief is threatened when the latter becomes so all-consuming that it subsumes the former, which can only lead to religious fanaticism.  The Pontiff provided a cogent and erudite argument in his speech, which included an illustrative quote from the 14th century emperor of Byzantium, Manuel II Paleologus:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

This Pope is not merely an intellectual giant who, since 1981 was the Church's Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--i.e., the guarantor of orthodoxy--but is a deft polemicist who typically uses his opponent's own foibles which convinces his audience of the veracity of his argument.  This is precisely what he did in this speech and for that he was predictably vilified.

Although his apologies and regrets were heartfelt and sincere, we should be under no illusions that they will have any impact on the extremists because their monomaniacal hatred of the West and concomitant Islamic militancy has thoroughly blinded them to reason. 

The question we must ask ourselves is whether Islamism, as practiced by the extremist strain, is capable of reasoned discussion?  The question the Pope raised was meant to engage moderate, mainstream Muslims, in particular those in leadership positions, in a dialogue to effectively isolate the extremists.  In other words, this is their chance to denounce the terrorists and convince the civilized world that Islam is, in fact, a religion of peace.

We've heard the voices of violence and barbarism that have called for attacks on the Vatican and the Pope.  Where, pray tell, are the presumed multitudes of moderate Muslims to condemn the extremists and assure us that peace is a goal they share with the Western world in general, and with Catholics specifically?

In an ostensibly thoughtful but ultimately unpersuasive article in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria draws an historical comparison between the Cold War and our war with Islamic terrorism.  His premise is that not unlike the Cold War, our enemy in this war is not monolithic and President Bush's comparisons to our erstwhile foe are strategically ill-advised. 

Zakaria quotes State Department official Ware Adams who, in 1949, argued that U.S. policy was misguided in that it characterized all communists as one monolithic group which

has tended to force them to become or remain part of the monolith.  For example, in China, the communists are somewhat pressed towards being friends of the Kremlin by the fact that they can never be friends of ours.

Forgiving, for the sake of counterargument, the hopelessly naive construction of Ware's argument, political fissures between multiple adversaries within an apparently seamless movement ought to be fully exploited, thereby keeping all of them off balance.  However, comparing China and the Soviet Union to the various fractious elements in the Middle East is intellectually disingenuous.  Further, unlike the communist nations historically, the jihadists share a common belief and goal, one uniquely informed by a religion:  To wit, they are convinced that Islamic law ought to prevail in the world and they are unflinching in their goal to annihilate the "infidels" to achieve it.

In fact, the Bush Administration does recognize the diversity among Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India,  Shiites in Iraq and Sunnis in Egypt.  Indeed, the president has not argued that they are all part of "one worldwide movement" (i.e., closely coordinated with a single, shared polity) as Zakaria asserts.  Rather, Mr. Bush has focused on the statements and actions of each belligerent group and has calibrated responses designed to confront and neutralize them before they become regional or global threats.

Cold War comparisons are only apposite to the degree we correct for the obvious differences in the widely divergent manner in which the Soviets et al advanced their agenda and goals because, from a purely strategic perspective, the differences in the religious backgrounds of the jihadists and their resulting unique animosities are moot because it's clear that their common modus operandi--asymmetrical warfare--renders them equally lethal. 

While it's always wise to take into account the unique ideological and historical differences among common foes, we must deal with this congeries of barbarians in roughly the same manner and that is to act pre-emptively, with a strong counter-insurgency focus. 

Zakaria's recommendations would doubtless have a strong United Nations focus because, in his view, each sect or entity is so vastly complex as to demand a highly nuanced dialogue.  Negotiations and dialogue have their place but only when backed by the transparent and credible threat of verifiable sanctions and, ultimately, military force. 

Clearly, we must also scrutinize each of our enemies and exploit their vulnerabilities.  However, had President Reagan not aggressively prosecuted the Cold War the demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent isolation of the remaining Stalinist states would not have occurred. 

The same formula applies with this enemy and getting lost in the details of the peculiarities specific to each of our numerous jihadist enemies is a benefit to them, not us.

Glimpsing the world through the kaleidoscopic world of liberalism, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post asserts that due to "the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush Administration," Osama bin Laden has won.  Mr. Cohen's analysis is at once a masterful misappraisal of our enemy, an ignorant and politically charged preoccupation with with capturing bin Laden, a gross distortion of our accomplishments in Afghanistan, and a uniquely cynical comment on the vital work the U.S. and its coalition allies are performing in Iraq, which he calls "for naught."

It may take years, but bin Laden will be captured or killed, but with the advent of splinter groups and terrorist proxies, his is a largely iconic influence, which is rapidly waning.  Yet Mr. Cohen argues that having President Bush as his foe made him "so fortunate in his choice of enemies," and that since the president told the international community to "shove it," the U.S. is now reviled throughout the world.

It's a profoundly tendentious perspective that argues that, our many setbacks and miscalculations aside, a President Gore or Kerry would have been more aggressive, deft, or successful against the Islamic jihadists.  Indeed, it's productive to recall that they and President Clinton had their chances in the 1990s and failed utterly to take action against this sea of troubles.  Rather, they dithered and clacked their jaws in perfect unison with the U.N., while bin Laden and his associates snickered and grew stronger and more bold.

Leadership is an endangered trait in contemporary international politics.  Indeed, with the exception of President Bush and British Prime Ministers Blair and Howard--the only stalwarts in the war against the jihadists--one is hard pressed to think of a major voice who has acted with principle against a protracted chorus of international criticism.  Is it Mr. Bush's fault that the genesis of Islamic extremism came to a baleful fruition on his watch, at a time when leadership in Western Europe has been so thoroughly feckless?

With respect to Iraq, Mr. Cohen smugly states that "We now know that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction," but that is at best a highly misleading assertion.  There isn't one intelligence agency, not one member of Congress, not one leader in the free world, who didn't believe that Saddam had WMD, and, indeed, he did.  In fact, with the Harmony project still far from being complete, we may learn much more about that. 

But the way Mr. Cohen describes it it's as though we were accusing Sweden of having WMD.  Saddam had a long record of genocide, of using WMD against his own people, of hegemonic ambitions with respect to Iran and Kuwait--therefore, this was, indeed, a barbarous despot and the Middle East is clearly better off with him out of power. 

The majority of Americans implicitly understand that war is ugly, imprecise, and unpredictable.  President Bush's speech last evening was focused, deliberate, candid, and grounded in an unwavering determination to aggressively prosecute this battle against this evil as long as it takes.  Indeed, in sixteen minutes Mr. Bush explained in detail what we're up against, what it will take, and how important it is for the American people to understand that if we wish to preserve our way of life we have no option but to degrade this foe until it is effectively extinct.

Mr. Cohen's effete, craven, and specious arguments pale when compared with the real world assessment of the direness of our predicament that the president provided.  Our predicament is daunting, it is disconcerting, and its outcome is clearly not certain. 

All that is--or should be--certain is our resolve to prevail, and our commitment to the values expressed in our Republic's founding documents, which will carry the day.  All of that is contingent upon our political will, which is itself dependent upon our ability to understand what is at stake.

Editor's note:  This editorial marks a format change from our "Week in Review," which was an eclectic compendium of the week's events, to a single piece that addresses a key or seminal issue.  Reader comments have been helpful in this revision as well as others that are ongoing.

I.  The History

One of the most profound challenges our nation has faced in the five years since the despicable horror of 9/11 has been our internal debate concerning the origins of the hatred the Islamic terrorists have for the West in general, and the U.S. specifically.  In that regard it is beneficial to briefly review history to better appreciate the jihadists' motives.

In his declaration of 1998, Osama bin Laden wrote:

For more than seven years the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its terrorizes, Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases in the peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples...to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military is an individual duty of every Muslim who can, in any country where this is possible until the Aqsa mosque and the Haram mosque are freed from their grip, and until their armies are shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim.

Fast forward to bin Laden's October 7, 2001 videotape, wherein he spoke of the "humiliation and disgrace" that Islam has suffered for "more than eighty years."  At the time Americans were understandably puzzled by this opaque reference and it is probably the case that many remain so, unaware that in 1918, the Ottoman sultanate, the last of the great Muslim empires, was finally defeated.

Indeed, its capital, Constantinople, and much of its territory was partitioned between the victorious British and French Empires.  Although the Turks eventually liberated their homeland, it was not in the name of Islam but through a secular movement.  The final insult occurred in November 1922 when they abolished the sultanate, who was generally recognized as the caliph, the titular head of all Sunni Islam, the last in a long line of such rulers dating to Muhammad's death in 632 A.D.

Writing in the October 15, 2001 edition of Time, Hazem Saghiyeh, a columnist for the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat in London, observed:

...we in the Muslim world have not been able to overcome the trauma caused by colonialism.  Our oil wealth allowed us to import the most expensive consumer commodities, but we could not overcome our suspicions of outside political and ideological goods:  democracy, secularism, the state of law, the principle of rights and, above all, the concept of nation-state, which was seen as a conspiracy to fragment our old empire.

This civic and intellectual stagnation and the nearly permanent theocratic institutions that have taken hold in much of the Middle East have held the region in economic and civic check and have effectively prevented it experiencing the vastly superior system of Western governance that has made America the sole economic and military super-power.

II.  The Confluence of Revenge and Inbred Blindness

This deep longitudinal view provides a desperately needed depth to our modern war against the Islamic terrorists.  Beginning with the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 243 and culminating with 9/11, a distinct pattern emerged, but it's one that many Americans don't seem to fully appreciate, perhaps because it's the early edge of a decades-long war that we've entered..

Our inbred blindness began with the evisceration of our counter-intelligence capabilities, which can be largely though not exclusively attributed to President Carter whose CIA director Sansfield Turner, with support from a Democratic Congress, gutted the CIA's field officer program and hamstrung its analytical arm as well. 

Further, Democratic Senator Frank Church chaired a committee charged with restricting the scope of the CIA's legal authority to pursue terrorists.  Included in that broad and misguided reformation was the legal firewall that was created between the CIA and FBI, which prevented information sharing.

As we take inventory of how well the U.S. has prosecuted the war against the Islamic terrorists we ought to consider whether our approach might be strengthened by including a more robust counterinsurgency program.  Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman believes that our 'war on terrorism' is "something that has outlived its usefulness as a concept," and that a counterinsurgency strategy would:

...put more emphasis on political reform, economic development, information operations, which would de-emphasize the kinetics--the killing and capturing.  I'm not saying we shouldn't be killing and capturing terrorists.  But...we've had a disproportionate emphasis on that as a solution.

There is wisdom in that argument, first because it is largely silent on the causation of the jihadists' motivations which typically amounts to political psychoanalyzing and hand-wringing about America's flaws, foibles, and arrogance.  But, second, it's a positive approach that implicitly endorses self-determination and human rights as the two elements most likely to seed stability in otherwise inhospitable civic environments such as the Middle East.

III.  "The Next Attack"

Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon's alarming book, The Next Attack, attempts to analyze why we've not been attacked in the five years since 9/11.  One reason they cite is that Iraq has served as a staging ground for the jihadists to confront the United States.  But the more credible and disconcerting explanation is that bin Laden and his associates believe the next attack must dwarf 9/11 in its carnage.  As they wrote:

Mounting an operation that will kill thousands can take a long time, especially for a group that is averse to failure.

Although many, including President Bush, have argued that the absence of an attack on U.S. soil is proof that our counter-terrorism initiatives are working, the less political and therefore more credible analysis is that our efforts may have degraded or slowed their efforts, but that doesn't preclude the very real possibility that an attack of horrific proportions may be in the offing.

IV.  Victory and the Challenges Ahead

In a letter to the editor in the September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal, ClearCommentary's editor wrote:

The opportunity to prevail is entirely ours if we harden our collective will with an understanding of what is at stake--the very survival of Western civilization.  Indeed, now that the freedoms that inform the substance of our Republic are being threatened in so agonizing a manner, we must prepare ourselves for the kind of battles that will fundamentally rewrite the rules of engagement and that produce losses here and abroad.

We must also anticipate and immunize ourselves against the inevitable temptation to justify a premature termination of engagement as a hedge against the pain of continued casualties.  For unlike most wars, this one will lack the comforting finality of a single enemy applying the pen of defeat to the document of surrender.

This will be a war punctuated by muted victories, unpredictable onslaughts and periods of unnerving quiet.  But, with time, perseverance and prayers, we will achieve the unambiguous hegemony of democratic principles over the malevolent forces of terrorism.

Five years hence and the stark memory of 9/11 meaningfully dimmed in our collective memory, our political will has been severely compromised.  The insidious cultural plague of political correctness has crept into our debate and hobbled our counter-intelligence and counter-terrorist measures.  Further, sectarian violence in Iraq has led otherwise thoughtful people to consider whether the lives of our military personnel is worth the effort.

Yet, whether it is the war in Iraq or the war against the Islamic jihadists, our choices are limited.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stated:

They [Republicans] want to stay the course in the face of failure.  We won't.  We'll change course in Iraq.

But, other than departing prematurely which would leave a power vacuum to the delight of Iran and Syria, they have never clearly articulated how their course correction would differ from President Bush's, much less why theirs is more a more persuasive plan.

Our only true path is through the unpleasant and uncertain course of aggressively pursuing our enemies on every front, while concurrently  exporting the values of democratic self-determination and respect of human rights.  That will take time, probably decades, and in the meantime we'll be obliged to accustom ourselves to life with the threat of Islamic terrorism because although we can degrade the threat it will never be entirely eliminated.

There simply no other plausible plan to deal with these exigencies.

It's now been confirmed that ABC executives made the decision to redact and revise a number of scenes in its upcoming mini-series "The Path to 9/11."  The pressure exerted on ABC from former President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, et al, has been in direct proportion to their fear that their legacies would be tarnished by evidence about which most Americans are unaware.

While the producers generally work hard to achieve fidelity to the facts, there is an element of discretionary artistic license that must be exercised when making such a film, as Oliver Stone can attest. 

Ironically, when Stone produced his largely fictional account of the Kennedy assassination, there was little outcry about the gross liberties he took with the facts, ditto for The Davinci Code.  Yet those were major films, the first challenged the conventional wisdom about a seminal event in our nations history and the second savaged perhaps the most hallowed icon in Western civilization. 

Although they were in a somewhat different genre, all three films purport to provide a version of the truth, which for our post-modern sensibilities, is as close to a declaration of verisimilitude as we can hope to get.  But in neither the Kennedy nor the Davinci film was there any hint of restraint or handicapping with respect to the veracity of its presentation of "facts." 

From press releases we know that the intent of the 9/11 series is to present an accurate rendering of events that led up to the attack which makes the producers' obligations for fairness in their handling of information and evidence more burdensome.  Viewers and film critics will have to decide whether they have achieved their goal.

But from a veracity perspective, Mr. Clinton is a mirror image of our MSM in that their exquisite sense of selective truth-telling is perfectly balanced to suit their political goal du jour.

There is no reflection, there is no hesitation, no fact-checking or, God forbid, humility.  As the nation learned during the impeachment hearings, truth for them is a tool that is malleable and purposely crafted to immunize them against political liability and, in the case of Mr. Clinton himself, to further his insatiable drive for unalloyed power.

What's most remarkable is the left's unapologetic defense of this man for whom honesty is an ever-elusive characteristic.  As Shelby Steele wrote when the impeachment process was in full throttle, we've entered a new era wherein if one's politics are "correct" one's sins are forgiven, and, for Mr. Clinton, those sins included perjury and a variety of other unsavory indictments.

So we should not be surprised when he and his legions of former cabinet members and senior staffers become apoplectic at the notion that, among other well-documented charges, he squandered the opportunity to capture bin Laden. 

Indeed, they afford themselves a robust revisionist leniency that is absent in their appraisal of President Bush's performance vis a vis Iraq and the war against the Islamic terrorists.

It's shameful but wholly predictable.