In an inadvertently revealing editorial in Slate, Amy Sullivan provides convincing evidence that since the 2004 election when Democrats understood the importance of religion in politics, they have actually lost ground.  More critically, if they heed Ms. Sullivan's advice, their dream of capturing the elusive moderate voter will never see the light of day.

Ms. Sullivan uses polls and anectodal evidence of the continuing slide, including how awkward it was in 2004 when Democratic candidates hired "religious staffers" who truly didn't know their charge.  She also catalogs the stereotypes of our respective major parties, most of which are true and include polls that indicate that people across the political spectrum believe the Democratic Party is not 'religion friendly.'  She further laments the hemorrhaging of Catholic voters and recommends revamping the DNC's strategy in that regard.

However, what's most revealing about this strategic gameplan is how it is informed by transparently political motives that lack an even glancing affiliation with religious values, all of which are tied to policies that are supported only to the degree to which they may capture moderate voters.  Indeed, that religion is the third rail of politics for liberals is axiomatic, but watching Sullivan delicately tread the needle is a spectacle to behold. 

So it is that she finishes her remarkably ironic piece by recommending that Democrats:

...should shout from the mountaintops Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid's plan to reduce abortion rates, talk to every evangelical who will listen about global warming, and re-embrace the concept of the common good that once united religious and political progressives.

Absent from her entire editorial is any unpoliticized--read traditional--reference to God or religion.  Indeed, religion for the modern liberal is far more a matter of political expedience than faith, absolutes, and the values that underwrite them. 

As Sullivan unwittingly illustrates, the left remains anachronistically mired in a 1960s 'social justice' paradigm that presupposes a victim mentality which more sophisticated (or to use their favorite shibboleth, 'evolved') voters eschew.  That change reflects the electorate's nascent understanding that values matter more than ethnicity or gender and that blaming 'the system' is merely code for excusing a lack of perseverance and the left's habituated inclination to externalize the source of failure.

If the Democrats truly want to become serious about courting the religious vote they should begin by praying for the grace and guidance that is so conspicuously lacking in their dim understanding of the nature religion in the lives of the seriously faithful.

That may provide them with a platform that doesn't just seek to "reduce abortion rates" but rather to stigmatize abortion is the abhorrent act that it is; it may also lead them to understand that such politically seductive initiatives as minimum wage increases are not only economically naive but actually hurt the very people their designed to help.

The list is virtually endless, but unless they have a soul-searching conversation at the highest levels of the party we can expect another election season punctuated with embarrassing gaffs and disingenuous Biblical references, all of which will signify nothing.

As reported this weekend, Fox News reporter Steven Centanni and his cameraman, who were abducted and then released by Islamofascists, were forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam.  Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume and William Kristol reflected on the kind of religion that would resort to gunpoint conversions. 

Although most Muslims would never use the threat of death to convert the unwilling, this is nonetheless a savage condemnation of the kind of extremism that Islam breeds.  Now for the political dimension:  Imagine the frenetic response if an Israeli or Christian group had done this, yet the sounds of silence from our  European and American elites are deafening. 

The double standard against mainstream religions such as Judaism and Christianity is a natural outgrowth of the anti-establishment crowd that despises anything that smacks of absolutes or has a hierarchical structure.  Whether civic or religious in nature, any assertion, value, or principle that requires suplication in any form is anathema.

The irony is that although there is nothing in the world more rigid, more patriarchal, or more inflexible, than the Islamic religion, the left is reticent to criticize it, or, more specifically, they will deign to criticize this particular act but none will agree that it is consistent with the precepts or tenets of the faith.

A cursory review of the Koran tells us something rather different.  Further, the 18th century Wahabi movement, which has flourished in Saudi Arabia, is the most popular sect among "true believers."  It's also one that demands death for any who blasphemes it. 

We would do well to candidly recognize that Muslim extremism is spreading across the globe like a religious wildfire and it's finding fertile ground in virtually every place it attacks.  We can wring our hands and spend time like our ivory-towered academics analyzing the genesis of this movement or we can agree that it began long before 9/11, and that regardless of how erudite we may be in our exegesis, the fact remains that the Islamofascists are bent upon our destruction.

Mr. Centanni was remarkably calm in his interview and had nothing but predictably kind words for the religion of Islam.  Indeed, it pains decent people who are forced to conclude that such a religion is de facto dangerous to the common good.  But although untold millions of Muslims practice it in peace there are disturbing numbers who contend those peaceful Muslims are themselves heretics because they are unwilling to take arms against the "infidels," we Westerners.

The best efforts of liberals worldwide to minimize and obfuscate the truth, the Islamofascists are excelling beyond our wildest nightmares in making the case that we are indeed in a perilous situation.  Whether or not we aggressively prosecute this enemy, it will never abate. 

Indeed, we can only hope to depreciate it to the point where it's less lethal, and that can only be done when we speak with one voice.

I.  Welfare Reform Plus Ten

Those with keen historical memories will recall the liberals' misplaced emphasis when President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare form bill.  The quaint and largely forgotten notion that work is the most reliable guarantor of success was overlooked by the left for the more politically rich vein which they conveniently, if cynically exploited. 

Three Clinton appointees resigned, and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, perhaps the most predictable touchstone of reflexive liberalism, shrieked:

They're coming for the children.  They're coming for the poor.  They're coming for the sick, the elderly, and the disabled.

The normally level-headed Senator Patrick Moynihan was overtaken by a fever that clouded his judgment when he characterized the reform as "something approaching an apocalypse."  Of course, Mr. Clinton himself, who twice vetoed similar reform bills, was dragged kicking and screaming to the table.

Ten years later, the interim results are in and although you won't hear any mea culpas from the liberals, the results are rather different than the picture of Dickensian disaster they painted.  The rate of black children living in poverty is 32%, down nearly ten percent from 1996.  The percent of lower-income people who are employed and working their way, albeit slowly, up the economic ladder has increased as well. 

Our values informs our culture and our politicians primary responsibility is to reform our values by instituting public policies that realign incentives to encourage independence, hard work, and a fair playing field. 

The Republican-led welfare reform bill did just that, and it has clearly improved the lives of millions who were leading unproductive lives while transferring those flawed values to yet another generation.  The process is by no means complete, but meaningful progress has clearly been made.

II.  'Plan B':  Another Step Backward

Leaders of Planned Parenthood hailed the FDA's approval of the so-called morning-after pill as a seminal victory, saying it could prevent 1.5 million unintended pregnancies and 800,000 abortions.

Taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, Plan B is tantamount to an extremely high dose of birth-control pills.  The resulting surge of hormones interferes with ovulation and fertilization, or it may potentially prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

Although the medical community doesn't believe this constitutes abortion, not all agree.  But there is a more fundamental and therefore more profound issue here, one that has generally eluded scrutiny by liberals who gleefully touted the decision as yet another advance towards their goal of achieving heaven on earth.

To appreciate the substrata of this issue we begin with the disparity between liberals and conservatives with respect to the meaning of human life.  Although we must minimize the trauma and distortion of reducing such complex differences into mundane terms, it ultimately comes down to whether or not one believes that our raison d'etre here on earth is to maximize our pleasure and minimize our accountability.  Liberals generally endorse this polity, conservatives generally don't.

Indeed, if the design and intent of our time on earth is self-defined, which is to say purely a matter of secular pragmatism, then our primary motivation and goal is to submerse ourselves in the pursuit of physical pleasure.  Although it's a cravenly solipsistic philosophy, in the past 40 years our cultural incentives have been dramatically reconfigured to encourage that very behavior. 

But if our existence is the product of a divine force, something that as humans we have no capacity to understand but that expresses itself in the oblique and tangential manifestation of our religious yearnings--id est, faith--then raw sexual satisfaction sans inconvenient consequences--read pregnancy--is the antithesis of our first and most crucual obligation. 

In that case, Plan B and the entire panoply of liberalism's broad denial of absolutes that provides for them a blanket endorsement of all things earthly and ephemeral, are themselves obstacles to our moral development.

The contrasting vision is one where moral discipline and principle are paramount, where delayed gratification and self-sacrifice are virtues that provide exponential value in ways not readily apparent to those focused only on the momentary satisfaction of our mortal desires.

The liberals may claim a victory in their grand design to create a civic and cultural landscape free from morality and principle, but in truth the approval of Plan B is simply another insult to our collective moral foundation.

That foundation was established as a powerful and resilient framework which, until this generation, was successfully transferred through the decades and centuries, and which strengthened people by helping them understand that life's real meaning lies in adhering to God's plan, which enjoins us to selflessly work for the betterment of future generations, not in finding ways to short-circuit the heavy moral lifting that work demands of us.

III.  The Phantom Nature of Sanctions

That the hopelessly fragile coalition at the U.N. is already starting to fray should not be a surprise to anyone.  France, always a predictably inconstant partner in any conflict, has begun sending signals of its reticence to impose meaningful sanctions when--not if--Iran continues its uranium enrichment program. 

A tandem response from Russia's Defense Minister telegraphed a similar insistence to allow the "political and diplomatic solution" to be fully engaged.  China has also sent diffident signals after its initial willingness to consider meaningful sanctions.

To its credit, the U.S. is working on a parallel process to ensure that some form of sanctions is in place shortly after the August 31st deadline.  Although it won't, that process should include a provision that any state violating Security Council Resolution 1540, which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to terrorists, would constitute a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter--that would lead to authority for military action.

In quintessential French parlance, which features an unqualified disdain of confrontation and a naive belief in the sincerity of such liars as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, its Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said that although Iran's initial response is unsatisfactory,

...we want to avoid a new conflict that could lead to a clash of civilizations.  The worst thing would be to escalate into a confrontation with Iran on the one hand, and the Muslim world with Iran, and the West.  That would be the clash of the civilizations that France today is practically alone in trying to avoid.

Those schooled in the ingeniously nuanced pre-WWII diplomatic efforts of the French and British will recognize in this expose a similarly quiet desperation at the very thought of confrontation. 

This approach is actually a faithful blueprint of Israeli PM Olmert's, who provided a textbook example of strategic myopia, by first failing to understand the enemy and then, logically, prosecuting the wrong war.  The only thing worse than aggressively confronting an enemy is waiting until that enemy has coalesced into a more robust and lethal foe, because then the challenge is multiplied, as are the losses.

But many, perhaps most, in the U.S. and much of the world, seem predisposed to let this baleful enemy gather its strength, to include a crude nuclear capability, at which point we will yearn for such comforting strategic conventions as Mutual Assured Destruction.

IV.  Saddam's Genocide

Last week, those more inclined to focus on the lack of WMD stockpiles in Iraq than on Saddam's crimes of genocide were treated to gruesome testimony of his Anfal campaign of 1987-88 against the Kurds.  During that horrendous attack some tens of thousands are alleged to have been gassed and some 2,000 villages completely decimated. 

How anyone can feel that the Middle East specifically and the world in general isn't better off without this savage despot in power strains the imagination.  For transparent political reasons, many on the left seem to minimize the barbarity of Saddam whose brutal crimes against humanity are in the same genus as those of Hitler and Stalin. 

Iraq's current state is unquestionably a major challenge for the civilized world, but one can use it as a proxy for the degree to which politics plays a role in one's calculus.  Liberals instinctively smell political blood and call it a failure, conservatives can't help but admit that it's a dire situation but they see the potential for an inchoate form of democratic rule as the best hope for long-term stability in the Middle East.  Toppling and bringing to justice the butcher of Baghdad is a good beginning.

V.  Sexual Assaults at The Citadel

The Citadel, the previously all-male military institution, declared that 20 percent of its female cadets reported being sexually assaulted.  Ten or more years ago, this and many other arms of our military were under intense pressure to admit women into their ranks.  Feminists argued that women had a Constitutional right to every opportunity that men enjoyed and for them these bastions of unalloyed testosterone represented the Holy Grail.

Not unlike the goal of integrating women into all branches of the military proper, their arguments here were predicated on the twofold and supremely misguided notion that women were as equipped for warfare as men and that any adverse impacts from mandating their inclusion would be minimal and short-lived.  Both were, of course, categorically incorrect.

"Different" in the view of the feminists and their liberal brethren is an unacceptable premise because they ineluctably interpret it as inferior.  But, in order to accommodate them in our armed services the entire gamut of entrance requirements and training strandards had to be fundamentally revamped--downward. 

Second, and inextricably related, is the evidence, which is so abundant as to be impossible to avoid, that on a scale of capacity for violence and aggression, men are naturally at its zenith and women at its nadir.  The sole charge of our military is to defend our nation and to win wars.  Their inherent aggressiveness and physical aptitude naturally argues for men to assume this role, but politics being what it is and our culture being what it is, liberalism prevailed.

So now we're confronted with what most on the right considered inevitable and those on the left apparently find shocking--the high rate of sexual assaults at our military academies.  Rules, ethics, and the stringent code of military conduct are vital training tools but they are no match for the base genetic code deeply ingrained in our very core.  That code is only marginally susceptible to modification which is why men are as close to the perfect killing machine as we can get.

In the misguided spirit of political correctness and the goal of 'gender equality' women are now in virtually every position in our military which were exclusively reserved for men.  The result, in our military as well as our in the ranks of law enforcement, is not only rampant sexual assaults but a compromised fighting capacity.

VI.  Death of a Photojournalist

Most Americans would probably not recognize the name of Joe Rosenthal.  His photograph of the U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment of the 5th  Division that raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945 won him the Pulitzer Prize.

But in a generational lesson as well as one for photographers and all those whose creative abilities are artistically applied, the thought that this image would become an American icon never occurred to him:

Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up.  I swung my camera and shot the scene.  When you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot.  You don't know.

The Marines had landed on February 19 and it took four days for a contingent to scale the mountain.  In a lesson for those who believe that victory can be prescribed (read in Iraq), more than 6,800 U.S. servicemen died in the five-week battle for control over the island; further, the 21,000-man Japanese defense force was virtually destroyed.

The horrors of that conflict momentarily aside, one can't help be struck by the unified sense of determination that the image projects, not to mention the sacrifice it took for them to achieve success. 

We are clearly in a different kind of war, both in Iraq, as well as our broader war against the Islamofascists, and there is no question that ours is not unified nation against this enemy because many fail to recognize it.  There are many reasons, all of which are mired in a moral confusion as well as our cultural reticence to judge a religion, even one that champions death over life.

But that doesn't diminish or inhibit the threat, and indeed, it may provide it with a strategic advantage that we can ill-afford because since it operates outside the parameters of any nominally recognized international law, it already enjoys a profound advantage.

We can only hope and pray that it won't take another major attack on our nation for our Republic to become unified in the spirit of self-preservation. 

VII.  The Poincare Conjecture Solved

Reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman won the coveted Fields Award, the math world's highest honor, for solving the 100 year old three-dimensional conundrum known as Poincare's Conjecture.

The conjecture dictates that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hold can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.  The challenge is that the space has to be finite.  The traditional example is an insect walking on a straight line on an apple--it will inevitably return to its beginning. 

Although the apple has three dimensions its surface has only two.  The insect can walk backward, forward, and sideways--but not up and down.  Ironically, a similarly conjecture was proved for spaces of more than three dimensions, but the 3-D case has vexed mathematicians for two decades--until Mr. Perleman.

His success begins with Columbia University's Richard Hamilton, who, in 1982 developed a technique called Ricci flow, which provided mathematical formulae that smoothed the unpredictable surfaces of 3-D surfaces and which provided the clues for solving the conjecture.

In this convoluted mix are dense spots called singularities, which exhibit precipitous and uncontrolled change.  Mr.  Perelman's work demonstrated not only how to understand these singularities but how to neutralize them for brief periods which allowed the Ricci flow to move forward, which defined the precise nature of a particular space, at least in the mathematician's abstruse world, which in this case, means in topological terms. 

Makes you wish you had studied math, right?

In an editorial in the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne analyzes liberalism’s ‘downside,’ but his conclusions are far too self-flattering and restrained. He lionizes David S. Brown’s biography of Richard Hofstadter, who was famous for his “icon-smashing approach to America’s heroes,” but argues that he went awry by emphasizing American populists “whose revolt was as much a reaction to the rise in the cosmopolitan big city as to economic injustice.”

Liberalism’s problems are far more profound because its tenets are not only antithetical to the vision of our Founding Fathers they also constitute a cynical and craven valuation of human nature.  Beginning with its perverse understanding of economics, modern liberalism subscribes to the misguided notion that everyone ought to enjoy the same quality of life regardless of aptitude or work ethic, which inevitably leads them to the invidious policies of income redistribution, where certain people are rewarded for phantom efforts.

Dionne perfectly reflects this polity when he calls for an “active but restrained government” which is code for exploiting white guilt to afford minorities disparate treatment in everything from college entrance requirements to employment.  The defense of the proverbial “underdog” is another perennial favorite with liberals, but there is absolutely no justice in their protocol for determining who qualifies.  Indeed, they use anachronistic metrics such as race, ethnicity, and gender, none of which is a true measure of need.

On the cutting edge of liberalism is Juan Williams, whose new book “Enough” holds an unflattering mirror up to minorities, in particular blacks, and demands cultural accountability.  In the vein of Bill Cosby, who was pilloried when he spoke out about the black culture of failure and blame, Williams, also a black, chastises his own by highlighting how liberal blacks stigmatize success as being “white,” and argues that disproportionate incarceration rates for blacks as well as out-of-wedlock childbirths and drop-out rates, are the product of aberrant values, not racism.

Add to this ignoble legacy liberalism’s barbaric embrace of abortion and nascent support for euthanasia, its enmity for the Second Amendment, and its timorous and reticent approach to national security, and it’s no wonder that their ranks are dwindling. 

So, it is, in fact, a matter of values.  In a remarkably honest and insightful editorial, Juan Williams builds not only only Bill Cosby's incisive criticism of the black culture, but actually hearkens back to Senator Patrick Moynihan's research in the 1960s that provided strong evidence of aberrant cultural behavior in blacks. 

Of course Messrs. Moynihan and Cosby were summarily pilloried for their temerity, and it will be fascinating to see whether Mr. Williams will suffer the same fate, or whether his would-be critics will finally be honest with themselves and thank him for his candor and principled approach to a refractory problem.

Those concerned with the plight of minorities, in particular blacks, can only be encouraged by Mr. Williams' unyielding rhetoric and his insistence that traditional values in the form of postponing sexual intercourse until after marriage, of the strength of two-parent families, and of not succumbing to the culturally divisive coda that affords blacks a ready made excuse for failure. 

Indeed, there is a fresh candor in Mr. Williams' entreaty to his brethren to look inward when examining the painful shortfalls that have effectively consigned them to lives on the lower economic rungs and little hope of progress in the next generation.  That they must see in their culture what amounts to a nihilistic indifference and noxious amorality and work to correct it.

But this is a legacy that will not be easily changed because there is such political capital invested in its perpetuation.  Because if the Rev. Martin Luther King's dream of a color blind society can be reached by blacks making self-interested decisions and resisting the powerful temptation to look to the government to redress their ills, many, perhaps most of which are self-inflicted, then the liberals will experience the horror of a collective power vacuum. 

Unfortunately, that is what hangs in the political balance.  Over the past few decades the sharp-edged black practitioners of ethnic invective who tirelessly sow ill will and distrust have found political pay-dirt in creating civic fissures among various minorities and whites.  Theirs is a world where every person is racist and is a proxy for white oppression of the black, where every opportunity to truly bridge the gap is squandered for their craven exploitation of racial politics, which is nothing more than leveraging advantage in the public square.

If a majority of blacks can see in Mr. Williams' dream the value of dropping their own prejudices about their inbred inability to succeed and look with fresh eyes at an America that is far more free of prejudice than it has ever been, and finally, recognize that success is a fairly simple matter of values and discipline, they will have advanced not only their own chances for a better life, but their children's as well.

Americans across the entire political spectrum should thank Mr. Williams for his sincerity and courage because his message will not be uniformly received in the positive and heartfelt manner it was intended. 

But it's clearly a sign of progress when a liberal black with a major editorial voice in America sees through the political gauze and recognizes the truth for what it is--and prays that his fellow blacks will begin to recognize it as well.

I.  "A Rose by Any Other Name"

How we characterize an enemy, especially in the context of asymmetrical warfare, is vital to our ability to defeat it.  Shortly after 9/11, the phrase "war on terror" was used by our elected leaders to euphemistically describe the enemy more accurately know as Islamofascism. 

That term was first introduced by the French writer Maxine Rodinson, and he used it to describe the Iranian Revolution of 1978, and despite many on the left who greeted it with the same kind of naive embrace it employed with Stalin in the 1930s, it is clear to all but the arch-liberals among us that it is a seriously lethal regime.

Of course, part of the rationale for sanitizing our enemy can be attributed to political correctness which insists that no religion is evil, just some of its practitioners.  But we risk inhibiting our capacity to aggressively confront the evil that is clearly manifest in the Islamofascists when we fail to recognize that this is a religion that is contrary to every human advancement, from the values and principles enshrined in the Magna Carta to the highly refined American form of governance that scrupulously protects individual rights.

Indeed, Islamism, when practiced in a manner faithful to the Koran, presents significant obstacles to our Western sensibilities, from its mandated subjugation of women to its ferocious intolerance of those who would question its authority, much less make light of it (cf., the Danish cartoon fiasco). 

Therefore, what we're truly dealing with here is not just an abuse of a religion in service to a vision of world domination, it is, rather, the literal interpretation of its edicts which demands the annihilation of those who refuse to recognize its universal authority. 

We should, indeed, call this a war against Islamofascism because it is predicated on the religion of Islam in the uncompromising context of fascism.

II.  The Politics of Warrantless Surveillance

Americans concerned about the threat from Islamofascism should thank the ACLU and U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor for framing the argument just in advance of the November elections.  The judge ruled President Bush's NSA surveillance program illegal, on 4th Amendment and other levels. 

President Bush ordered an immediate appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which, legal scholars believe, will find in favor of the government. 

Indeed, there is every reason to expect a reversal on this appeal.  As Bobby Chesney, a national security law specialist at Wake Forest University stated:

Regardless of what your position is on the merits of the issue, there's no question that it's a poorly reasoned decision. 

Mr. Chesney, it should be noted, takes a moderate stance on the legal debate over the NSA program. 

However, the decision's tortured reasoning and slight chances of being sustained couldn't reign in the usual chorus of liberals who cheered the decision as a summary judgment on their allegations of Constitutional overreach by the Bush Administration.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was unrestrained in his praise for the decision, noting it was a welcome check on the administration, and Senator John Kerry asserted that it shows "no one is above the law."  ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero called it "another nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's anti-terrorism strategies."

There is a rich irony in these statements because they'll be mined for ads as the elections move into full swing.

Beyond that, all significant case law has sided with the president, in particular, in times of war, and that may be the ultimate rub:  Many on the left don't believe we're at war, that the very label provides political cover for a wide and, in their view, disturbing array of military responses. 

The only conclusion we can reach is that they believe if we leave Iraq, cease these "illegal" surveillance activities, and speak nicely of the Islamofascists, they will conveniently disappear.  Welcome to their world, which is predicated on the Looking Glass notion that evil is an abstraction and that U.S. foreign policy is the catalyst for the hatred our enemy has for us.

III.  The Ripple Effect of Israel's Failure to Decimate Hezbollah

Since the inception of the U.N. brokered ceasefire Iranian and Syrian leaders have held rallies and issued statements touting Hezbollah's victory over Israel as an unprecedented development, one that augers for a new chapter of Arab-Islamic (read fascist) domination in the Middle East. 

The downstream effects of Hezbollah's ability to engage Israel and live to boast about it inevitably bolsters Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon.  At a large rally Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that Hezbollah had "hoist the banner of victory" over Lebanon.  Predictably, he used the venue to flout the international pressure to cease Iran's enrichment activities, stating that:

We are fully mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for our peaceful atomic activities.  No one can take it away from us.  [emphasis added]

Hezbollah's resilience and, indeed, its ability to inflict significant pain on Israel, highlights the nascent guerrilla warfare environment in the Middle East, where the use of lethal proxies for intransigent regimes such as Iran and Syria will become increasingly common.  Indeed, David Makovsky, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, observed:

Through this conflict, the world has a better sense of the foreign-policy challenges that Iran poses for Middle East coexistence and and stability.

Predictably, European leaders are more concerned that the post-war destruction in Lebanon has seeded distrust and greater uneasiness of Western designs in the region than of the fact that a government-backed terrorist organization has acted with what amounts to international impunity. 

Their instinctive misappraisal of the nature of conflict, which insists upon a pre-emptive overabundance of concern for the effects of a sovereign nation's right of self-defense, is the analog of the American left's reflexive reticence when confronted with the savagery of Islamic terrorism. 

Our enemies must be convinced that further offensive efforts are not in their best interest and that can only happen when they are humiliated in battle, when their soldiers are bloodied in such massive numbers that they are no longer willing to fight.  Israel fell pathetically short of that goal, and if the Democrats prevail in November, there is every reason to believe that the U.S. will become a docile giant, ripe for emasculation.

IV.  George Soros and the Left's Fantasyland

In an op-ed in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, George Soros, the wealthy liberal whose ideas have propelled the left into continued political isolation, argued that "terrorism is an abstraction."  His premise is that

the "war on terror" metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11.  It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.

Taking up the pre-WWII sentiment that we shouldn't anger the Nazis, Mr. Soros argues that

war by its very nature creates innocent victims...The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment...that in turn serves to build support for terrorists.

The more astute counter-terrorism analyst agree that the 'war on terror' is not an apt characterization, that we are, in fact, fighting Islamofascism.  One wonders whether Mr. Soros would be more comfortable with that appellation, but he would probably find the notion of a religious group bent upon the West's destruction equally unacceptable--a gross over generalization, an unfair distortion, or both.

His argument is that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Sunni insurrection are so vastly different that aggregating the threat doesn't allow us to deal with them in a nuanced manner.  Further, "It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria."  Mr. Soros is among the hopelessly naive liberals who are simply unable to understand that the benefits of negotiations with the leaders of these nations will only redound to them. 

Finally, he asserts that this "war on terror" has made us the perpetrators, which is "how such a wide gap has arisen between American and much of the world." 

It's not that the U.N. and many European nations have demonstrated a convincing pattern in blurring the distinctions between despotic regimes and democratic nations?

It's not the fact that the U.S., which has three times saved the world from tyranny and is the greatest defender of human rights in the world, correctly sees on the near horizon a gathering storm, a storm with the face of radical Islam?

The contemporary liberal seems genetically predisposed to look first at America as the source of every problem, from Middle East conflict to their fantasies about global warming.  It's a peculiar world they inhabit, and they're welcome to remain there, but without their hands on the levers of political power.

V.  Big Box Politics

The Chicago city council's efforts to abridge the rights of corporations by forcing them to pay a so-called super minimum wage ($13 per hour) has predictably backfired. 

Alderman Joseph Moore, the ordinance's sponsor, has at best a dim understanding of market-based economics, not to mention municipal taxation.  He celebrated the ordinance's passage, saying "This is a great day for working men and women in Chicago."  Really?

Target and Wal-Mart have already recoiled by the council's action, with the former canceling plans for a store on the city's beleaguered North side and the latter putting on hold its plans for 20 new stores in a variety of locations in Chicago. 

To his credit, Mayor Richard Daley, has threatened to veto the measure because he understands that the huge loss of the anticipated tax revenues would drive up property taxes.

The "living-wage" initiative has swept in from the liberal north-east, blanketing the entire nation in a rich loam of political stupidity that is far less concerned with helping lower-income workers than in cudgeling corporate giants and retaining power. 

Indeed, when the likes of Target and Wal-Mart decline to site stores in urban areas, not only are the local municipalities losing from a tax revenue perspective, but workers who apply in droves for those positions lose as well.  When a Wal-Mart opened just outside the Chicago limits--to avoid the council's burdensome law--27,000 people applied for 350 positions.

Finally, Wal-Mart saves each of its customers thousands of dollars a year because its prices are between 19 percent and 38 percent lower on average.  So if the liberal bleeding hearts really wanted to assist those less fortunate, they would champion Wal-Mart as an American success story that has helped hardworking people make ends meet.

But that, of course, is not their intention.

VI.  The Cynicism of the Morally Elite

Germans were stunned to learn that Nobel Prize winning writer Guenter Grass, a moralist who for decades has dressed down his fellow Germans for their sins of the past, was himself a member of the barbaric Waffen SS. 

He made this shocking revelation because the double life he had led for so long "weighed on me"--an understandable explanation but one not acceptable to many Germans.  Wolfgang Boerson, a Christian Democratic Union spokesman said:

Guenter Grass has been making moral demands on politicians all his life.  Now he should make these demands on himself and honorably give back all those honors he received, including the Nobel Prize.

His reaction is also understandable because at the core of moral certitude is and ought to be an unalloyed truthfulness and candor.  That noted, most people are instinctively forgiving when presented with confessions of human weakness, frailty, or, in this instance, someone who was  naively susceptible to a movement in which many became involved, only later to learn of the degree of its depravity.

Duplicity, even, or especially, after a long career that included moralizing against the sins of ideological intolerance, is difficult to forgive.  Long a critic of war, Mr. Grass was particularly critical of the U.S.'s post-9/11 posture.  Indeed, besides chastising his own people, Mr. Grass provided this stern admonition at the start of the Iraq war in 2003:

The word of the current American President 'You are either with us or against us' weighs as an echo of a barbaric era on all current events.

As a brief editorial in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal noted:

Had the U.S. followed Grass' advice 65 years ago, his career in the Waffen SS might have lasted longer than several months.  But, in a Continent liberated by American blood and treasure, this "peace" activist can, along with fellow European Nobelists Harold Pinter, Dario Fo and Jose Saramago, bash the U.S. in comfort and freedom.

In an editorial in the August 16th Wall Street Journal that is remarkably free of substance and replete with transparently recycled prosaic prescriptions, Ned Lamont reflects the pathetic degree to which the Democratic Party has become intellectually depreciated.  It also continues the trend of monied Democrats entering national races with scant political experience and an astounding willingness to parade their naive recommendations in the guise of serious policy.

He begins with simplistic candor by grafting his successful business experience onto the Leviathan called the federal government, informing readers that expenditures that out of control, praying that his liberal instincts--read tax and spend--will remain below the radar.  He reveals a deep ignorance by calling the war in Iraq "unprovoked," a predictable liberal attempt to render nebulous our war with Islamic jihad, and argues that it has deprived us of "needed social investment" at home.  Mr. Lamont should read Stephen Hayes' work that provides irrefutable evidence of the connection between Iraq and Islamic terrorism.

In the business world investing produces measurable results, commonly known as a Return on Investment (ROI).  But in the land of liberalism the second half of that equation is never scrutinized.  Indeed, the "investments" are, in fact, tax increases, and they are never held accountable, only perpetuated.  As President Reagan quipped, there is nothing so permanent on earth as a federal program.

Mr. Lamont inevitably gets around to the war in Iraq and the war against the Islamic terrorists, and, summoning all the persausive powers of a shoe salesman, argues that we must "change course."  He sums that up in two painfully succinct nostrums:  work with our allies and implement the 9/11 commission's recommendations.

It may be lost on him, but we have worked very closely with our allies, and it's that cooperation that led to Great Britain's success in averting an Islamic terrorist attack.  Similarly, the Bush Administration has focused on 6-party talks with North Korea, refusing the Clinton Administration's hopelessly naive focus on bilateral talks that produced the Agreed Framework, which Kim Jong Il approved with a mischievous smile and promptly contravened.

Further, we can't forget how the U.S., with the critical assistance of our allies, leveraged the full compliance of Libya which was on a glidepath to acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

Add to that the U.S.'s backing of a U.N. Resolution to internationalize the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, not to mention the consensual manner in which we've been dealing with Iran, and you have what amounts to the broadest amount of international support achieved in modern history.  What, pray tell, would Mr. Lamont do differently?  Of course, he's so short on details as to render his assertions meaningless.

In a final fit of insipid, misinformed analysis, Mr. Lamont alleges that

We are bogged down in Iraq, and hamstrung in the war against terrorism, by leaders who lacked judgment, historical perspective, openness to other cultures and plain old common sense.

So, there you have it.  In prototypical liberal fashion Mr. Lamont overlooks the lack of an attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, the U.S.' participation in the interdiction of several evolving terrorist plots around the globe, the exploitation--against strong Democratic opposition--of NSA electronic surveillance data and financial transaction data to degrade the threat of Islamic terrorism, and three democratic elections in a country that has never known freedom, something that, despite the daunting challenges we face there, we might expect Democrats to support.

To compound his compelling lack of substantive recommendations, the liberal Mr. Lamont says his primary win was a vote based on "pragmatism and reality, on optimism and hope."  That should be at least an honorable mention for the platitude of the year award.

All of this underscores the deeply misinformed way in which the center of the Democratic Party is being tectonically shifted leftward, such that a traditional Democrat in the vein of Jack Kennedy is stigmatized only because he clearly sees the gravity of our national security predicament. 

The Democrats gambled and lost in 2000, 2002, 2004, and are now gearing up for a repeat performance this year.  Theirs is a false confidence about the strength of their hand because no party has ever achieved political hegemony in time of war by lobbying for withdrawal, and there is no reason to believe that will change this year, or in 2008.

In his article in August 28th edition of The Nation, Eric Alterman, one of the more astute liberal political analysts, is hopelessly mired in his acerbic criticism of "Neocons."  He is part of a growing cabal of liberal critics who are monomaniacally preoccupied with vilifying conservatives as opposed to providing an alternative policy platform.

He sternly criticizes The New Republic and The Weekly Standard for their early and consistent support of military action against Syria and Iran.  Tacking harder into the wind, he takes on National Review's Mona Charen, who has been vehement in her criticism of American Jews, the vast majority of whom are liberal.

Next Mr. Alterman segues into a deft criticism of conservatives who are so unapologetically supportive of Israel, questioning whether that nation's interests are, in fact, the same as America's.  In doing so he lodges the reflexive liberal charge that any criticism of Israel elicits allegations of anti-semitism from conservatives. 

Completing his formulaic critique, he excoriates the Bush Administration and darkly ponders the implications of the Neocons prevailing in the debate concerning military action in the Middle East, fearing it would devolve into a four-front war.

Criticism, especially serious, evidence-based criticism is a healthy exercise because it forces us to reconsider the premises of our thinking as well as the downstream implications.  But to save it from being dismissed as the product of minority party frustration, it must also include alternative policy recommendations.  It's there that Mr. Alterman's argument falls flat and assumes the same rhetorical flourishes as his liberal brethren, proving yet again that despite the Bush Administration's many foreign policy missteps and miscalculations, the Democrats really wouldn't have instituted meaningfully different policies.

The further we are from the U.S. invasion of Iraq the more tenuous liberal memories become.  There is a rich record of quotes by Democratic senators and house members as we were gearing up for the invasion that provides unequivocal and incontestable evidence of the seamless consensus concerning Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction.  Although there were many other justifications for the invasion, that and the fact that Saddam had flouted a series United Nations' resolutions were primary and there was no dissension from party leaders on either side of the aisle.

Therefore, stipulating that, as well as the fact that many in and out of the Bush Administration did not predict the post-invasion ethnic and sectarian problems, what precisely would the Democrats have done differently?  Indeed, how would they have handled North Korea, whose missile testing threatens Japan and even the U.S.?  How would they recommend we deal with the recalcitrant Mr. Ahmadinejad, or Assad of Syria, both of whom are inveterate enemies of the West, in particular the U.S. 

Neither Mr. Alterman nor his nearly limitless brethren on the left have deigned to outline a credible policy recommendation, other than to say we should leave Iraq immediately or soon and that we should continue diplomatic efforts with Iran.

The left is clearly suffering from political battle fatigue; they're tired of the war and they don't want to deal with Iran and the world's other belligerents.  But that's our charge and while diplomatic efforts are vital, they are no utility except within the context of a transparent and deliberate plan that outlines unambiguous consequences.  That's also something that liberals are loath to do.

Their distinct preference is to hyperbolically rage about the "failed policies of the Bush Administration" and hope it raises their political capital.  Republicans should press the issue at every opportunity which will demonstrate to the American people which party is truly capable of protecting them, even when our best laid plans go awry. 

There are entire books on the strategic failures of WWI and WWII which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.  A blueprint for a war is an effective oxymoron because no war has ever been waged without countless revisions and amendments to the battle plan. 

It's clear that those more concerned with political hegemony than with prevailing against the enemy of Islamic terrorism are focused on the setbacks and challenges we face in Iraq as well as skittishly foredooming our nascent challenge in dealing with Iran. 

The American people are inherently disinclined to support a party whose primary agenda is self-interested.  The political heavy weights on the left are providing convincing evidence that political purchase is far more important than eliminating the forces of evil that are daily plotting America's destruction.

I.  The Evolution of Islamic Terrorism

Writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal, Judith Miller characterizes the evolving nature of the Islamic threat by referencing Clinton-era counter-terrorism official Steven Simon, the coauthor of "The Age of Sacred Terror.”  She writes that the foiled Islamic terrorist plot in Great Britain:

suggests that Islamic terrorism is in a transitional phase between, as Simon calls it, “your father's al Qaeda,” a highly centralized group whose relationships were forged in the Afghan crucible, and the new world of "self-starters," European citizens who “see themselves as avengers."

Al-Qaeda's structure and organization has always been the subject of some debate and confusion because of its non-linear, diffused, and largely autonomous, cell-based design.  Therefore, its evolution into one that exploits radical, indigenous Muslims in such places as Great Britain, is natural, albeit alarming, in particular because British officials estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 of its Muslims are al-Qaeda sympathizers and supporters.

In the aftermath of the averted attack, Farhana Ali, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, noted:It shows the fact that al-Qaeda has been able to replenish its ranks and rely on home-grown networks.

Dr. Bruce Hoffman, also of Rand, provides the following valuable insight into the group's shadowy, amorphous structure:

Huge gaps remain in our understanding of the group's mindset, decision-making processes, organizational dynamics as well as command and control relationships. 

But, his analysis does include this point that illustrates al-Qaeda's lethality:

We are talking about a nimble, flexible, and resilient entity.  There has never been an either/or with al Qaeda.  [It has] encouraged free-lance activity and franchises to operate on their own.

That analysis belies U.S. intelligence estimates that our efforts to pre-emptively degrade al-Qaeda's capabilities have hobbled their ability to mount terrorist attacks here and abroad. 

It also leads us to the vexing if somewhat academic argument popularized by the left that alleges the war in Iraq specifically, and U.S. foreign policy generally, have abetted the Islamic jihadists and swelled their ranks. 

Liberals are adept at exploiting such 'chicken and egg' arguments which are predicated on abstract and unprovable elements, because we can't run twin virtual reality experiments to determine which is valid.  Therefore, because each position is ostensibly plausible, it places liberals, who are convinced that our efforts created as many jihadists as they eliminated, on equal polemical footing with conservatives who are convinced that the last 25 years effectively proves the jihadists' intent to decimate the West, rendering moot our efforts in the past six years.

That history--which begins with the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and is punctuated with Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Kobar towers attack in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, the attack of the USS Cole in 2000, culminating in 9/11--provides cogent evidence for all but the politically jaundiced. 

Therefore, it is only through the sanitized prism of liberalism that one can conclude that our efforts to act pre-emptively against these despicable barbarians have caused legions of disaffected Muslims to join the ranks of extremists. 

Indeed, as recently as today on This Week with George Stephanopoulis, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich argued that we must try to understand why there is such hatred for America.  His recycled argument makes abundantly clear that the left has learned very little in the years since 9/11.

II.  The Politics of the Foiled Attack

As with all such events, Great Britain's ability to avert the attack brought the predictable responses from liberal stalwarts.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stated:

This latest plot demonstrates the need for the Bush administration and the Congress to change course in Iraq and ensure that we are taking all the steps necessary to protect Americans at home and across the world.

What's remarkable is that he can recite these canards with a straight face.  A champion of the hard left's cut and run policy in Iraq, Mr. Reid also recently crowed that he single handedly defeated the Patriot Act.  He further excoriated the Bush Administration's Swift program, which combed financial transactions at a Belgium clearing house for evidence of terrorist activities. 

In this instance, Peter Clarke, Britain's anti-terrorism chief, stated that the plot was foiled because

a large number of people had been under surveillance, with police monitoring spending, travel, and communications.

Indeed, in light of that, as well as the fact that it was the much maligned "sneak and peak" warrants by Scotland Yard and MI5 that led to the British authority's discovery of this plot, how, pray tell, would Mr. Reid suggest we "protect Americans" unless we exploit these programs?

Next, political opportunist, Senator Edward Kennedy asserted that

it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win.

It's ironic and illustrative that Mr. Kennedy didn't have the same disdain for President Clinton's policies when, in 1995, the exact same plot--aka "Bojinka"--was discovered.

The left's anti-terrorism program would amount to tepid and effete efforts because they are on record as sternly lecturing Republicans on the unacceptability of aggressive intelligence gathering, not to mention interrogation and detention programs.  When all of these paradoxical and contorted political stratagems appear in Republican ads this fall, Americans will have the chance to see which party is truly concerned with their security.

III.  The Left's Anti-Profiling Instinct

Most Americans are probably unaware of the government's efforts to identify potentially dangerous people before they enter our airports.  One such program, Secure Flight, has been bogged down in bureaucratic infighting, objections by the ACLU, and technological glitches.  It's been in development for three years and is designed to check passengers against a comprehensive terrorist data base, but is nowhere near ready for deployment.

Another such program uses behavior recognition to identify suspicious people at the airport, but has drawn fire from the ACLU, charging it constitutes racial profiling.  Yet another, inelegantly called Spot, or Screening Passengers by Observations Technique, involves trained security officers who scrutinize people in security lines and elsewhere in airports.

But the left's obvious skittishness, which is predicated on a misreading of our Constitutional safeguards as well as an apparent denial of the direness of our war against the Islamic fascists, has prevented meaningful profiling from being developed. 

This constitutes an obtuse aversion to countering this brutal enemy's tactics with a strategy that is at least as aggressive and ruthless.  Indeed, Sir Winston Churchill characterized the necessity of instituting similarly uncompromising methods as one's enemy as "measure for measure."  But, instead of aggressively profiling Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 40, which would provide the most accurate and reliable data to thwart would-be terrorists, we've developed politically correct and cumbersome workarounds that have never left the drawing board.

This is yet another example of how the left is undermining our war against the Islamic jihadists and one that Republicans must showcase during the fall elections.

IV.  The New Democratic Party

Below the surface of the Senate primary in Connecticut was evidence of a significant transformation in the Democratic Party.  Fifty years ago the party was unapologetically strong on national defense, believed in American exceptionalism, and was imbued with Christian principles. 

Its champions were party titans such as Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, and Henry Jackson.  Modern day versions of them were intellectual giants such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and and national security stalwarts such as Hubert Humphrey.  Since their time, this breed has become endangered, and Senator Joseph Lieberman is the last living member with any real stature.

These men were proud supporters of the American working class and in his three terms in the Senate, Mr. Lieberman has taken up their cause with a similar sense of justice, giving voice to the silent and politically impotent masses on the lower rungs of our economic ladder.

He is also an Orthodox Jew, in contrast to more popular party leaders such as Senator John Kerry whose faith is clearly a political prop; indeed, pols described large percentages of Kerry supporters in the 2004 election as secular, and many as fundamentally against organized religion.

The result is that today's prototypical Democrat is a person with a unprecedented transnational instinct, who would gladly import the culture and civic structures of Europe to America, while imposing Draconian taxes and cradle-to-grave entitlements. 

Similarly absent from their civic platform is any understanding or appreciation of the unique qualities of American government, this experiment in that has created unprecedented civic and economic freedoms, while supporting the rule of law.  Indeed, theirs is a reflexive uneasiness with the American values and virtues that guided us through two plus centuries of challenges, not to mention two world wars.

Further, patriotism for the new Democrat is narrowly prescribed and cautiously construed.  They seem predisposed to give America mixed reviews at every opportunity, downplaying the fact that 50 million souls now live in relative freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, while chastising the U.S. for a handful of lawbreakers in our military ranks.

At the core of these beliefs are values that were a natural, if perverse outgrowth of the 1960s.  Primarily reactionary in nature, they included a blinkered iconoclasm against the presumed patriarchal and oppressive 1950s, and included an aversion to viewing America as a nation whose values and principles placed it in the vanguard of the civilized world.

That distrust of American values, coupled with misconstrued lessons from Vietnam has created a party that Truman and his ilk would simply not recognize. 

It's because of this sea change within the party that inveterate Democrats such as Martin Peretz of the New Republic have worried aloud about the national security implications if the Democrats take control of Congress this fall. 

Mainstream Americans should join that chorus of concern because, as their reaction to this week's foiled terrorist attack demonstrates, they are supremely ill-equipped to protect this nation.

V.  Female Politicians:  A Different Breed?

A USA Today story highlighted various organizations that are promoting female candidates as the perfect antidote to the male-dominated political arena.  Not surprising, the article included only left-leaning organizations such as Emily's List and Georgia's WIN List.  Further, you won't be shocked to read that these groups firmly believe that women are somehow immune from the political power plays, back-stabbing, and viciousness that often informs traditional--read male-dominated--politics.

Gilda Morales of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, noted that female lawmakers often seek office for different reasons than men:

They're not running for the power of the office, but to get something done.

Conveniently, Morales and the women at Emily's and WIN overlook such examples of power hungry women as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (soon to be former "Rep."), not to mention the quintessential Washington power broker, Senator Hillary Clinton. 

Indeed, examples of power-seeking women are too numerous to catalog, but suffice it to say that it's emblematic of liberal women to blindly assert that women are somehow immune from the political jockeying and the even less salutary behavior that is fairly common in Washington, not to mention at the state level.

That's not to say that women don't often bring a unique perspective to issues of public policy, just that it's not dispositive in terms of how they conduct themselves or whether or not they are selfless public servants. 

Human nature runs deeply in all our genetic make-up and to argue that the softer sex has no desire for power and instinctively eschews the heady, if unflattering way it can hold one in its thrall, is a profoundly self-serving misreading of the facts.

VI.  Fat Babies on the Rise:  A Culture in Decline

There is a Greek axiom which highlights the problem of a rise in overweight babies:  The fish rots from the head down.  With over one-third of our nation falling into the category of obese and two-thirds overweight, is it any surprise that pregnant women are producing heavier--read fat--babies?

A related problem is that many women develop gestational diabetes and more babies are gaining weight rapidly in the first few months of life.  That translates into the unhealthful epidemic of adolescent obesity as well as diabetes in youngsters, all of which was unheard of just a generation ago.

Underlying these developments is the well documented fact that the newest generation to bear and raise children is arguably the least well equipped in terms of understanding the importance of discipline and sacrifice.  The corollary virtues of duty and obligation are also casualties of our contemporary culture which seems to take pride in overindulgence and an absolute inability to postpone gratification.

Culturally induced anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, the quality of life we enjoy in America is without precedent.  We live in houses that previous generations couldn't even dream of, we enjoy technological and medical advances that border on the miraculous, and a food supply that is plentiful and, in inflation-adjusted terms, inexpensive. 

Yet we are habitual complainers and bring the same level of exasperation to our jobs as we do to a slow-loading web site.  Although a key goal of life is happiness, it seems to be elusive in contemporary society, with our cynics asserting that it's merely the lack of pain and suffering.  But happiness is far more than that, it is, in fact, predicated on maturity, whose hallmarks are the virtues of duty and obligation.

Thankfully, those are timeless virtues, neither of which are dependent upon income or beauty--only sacrifice and hard work.

In an editorial in today's Boston Globe, Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, asserts that the war in Iraq has caused nearly universal sympathy for the terrorists and a collateral hatred for the United States.  As a corrective, he makes three recommendations to reassess our longer-term strategy in the war on terrorism.  Not unlike most analysts, Mr. Allison's arguments are polemically sound but fail to address the most profound problem we face.

He begins with the premise that occupying nations effectively guarantees an increase in terrorism, arguing that our quiet departure from Saudi Arabia removed one of bin Laden's raison d'etre.  But the mere assertion aside, there is no compelling evidence that it changed bin Laden's hatred of America, nor his post-9/11 pledge to murder 4 million innocent Americans.  Strategic capitulations, even when made in the spirit of religious respect and, in particular in the context of Muslim extremism, can only be interpreted as signs of diffidence.

Second, he argues that other governments, e.g., Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, etc., are ultimately responsible for dealing w