We begin with an editorial by two presumably informed international affairs analysts, Nikolas Gvosdev, editor at the National Interest, and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Readers skilled in rhetorical analysis will find that although this editorial enjoys the predictable patina of the learned mind, its polemical focus is exclusively unilateral, which is to say it provides the usual excoriation of U.S. foreign policy under President Bush, without any collateral analysis of the policy's political context.

Therefore, their editorial is laced with the blinkered critics' favorite catchwords and phrases, from "hubris" to "quagmire in Iraq" and even quoting "a besieged Richard Nixon" who called America "a pitiful, helpless giant" during the trauma of the Vietnam war.  Let's take a few steps back from this canvas of hyperbole and think tank cant.

First, we can be assured that were it not for the political stalemate in Iraq most of the criticism of this administration would evaporate.  It's a testimony to our generation's arrested adolescent development that it is at once incapable of seeing through the current challenges and has no stomach for the sting of battle.  Academic comparisons of casualties in previous wars for this breed of weak-kneed American elicits little more than yawns because they do not see in Iraq anything more than the losses.  As with every problem in their lives on a continuum from traffic jams to the inconvenience of having to confront Islamic jihad, they just want it to be over.

Indeed, the sophistry in this editorial that is cross-dressed in the guise of serious intellectual pursuit would be laughable were it not so damaging to the goal of bringing a degree of wisdom to America's challenges on the global stage.

Whether it's due to the remarkably resilient half-life of our tragic experience in Vietnam or merely the ignoble way in which we've learned to eschew responsibility, this generation has developed a unique aptitude for misreading the seminal events of our day as well as fundamentally misappraising the downstream implications. 

That goes far to explain our habituated dismissal of the nascent storm on our horizon in the form of Islamic terrorism, not to mention our learned instinct to see Europe as the world's intellectual bellwether, worthy of emulation.  Indeed, the United Nations, easily the most corrupt and vile organization in history, is lionized by the world's elites as the moral exemplar and the key to resolving the vexing problems in the Middle East.

When these gimlet-eyed analysts write that "America's invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has raised serious questions about its judgment" we can see an alarming majority of Americans nodding in intellectually obsequious agreement.  That its misinformation campaign has succeeded so spectacularly is evidenced by the diminishing Republican voices that historically contested such assertions. 

Such analyses have further blurred the lines between good and evil and now overtly question whether America is truly the force for good that it always has been.  Beyond providing fodder for liberalism's devout disdain for American exceptionalism, such efforts also abet the belligerent impulse so much in evidence in Iran and North Korea. 

The stock criticisms of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rarely commensurate with his threats to eliminate Israel from the map, have now become even more tepid and forgiving as his open letter to the American people indicates.  This is a man well schooled in the art of political warfare because he is acutely aware that America's redoubtable strength can never be directly confronted, but that the nation itself can be obliquely undermined through a direct marketing campaign. 

Convince the people that their military's presence in the Middle East is fueling hatred of Americans in all corners of the world and the shame and embarrassment will leverage them into political submission. 

In reality, the civilized world has succumbed to an unprecedented and incapacitating disorder, one predicated on the inversion of good and evil and manifest in a desperate desire to avoid confrontation, to appease aggressors, and to apparently be content living in a dreamworld where evil can be wished away.

The discomfiting facts of our world are that evil exists, that it's manifest in Russia's support for Iran's nuclear ambitions as well as its murder of journalists who got too close to the truth, in the barbarities in Darfur, to which the civilized world has largely turned a blind eye, and perhaps in its most ghastly incarnation, the Islamic terrorists who are actively seeking a nuclear device.

Is there any American who believes they wouldn't unleash such a weapon in Manhattan or Los Angeles if given the opportunity?  Yet we're obliged to suffer the intellectually insulting and insipid palaver emanating from the likes of Gvosdev and Takeyh who appear convinced that America is the world's foremost broker of ill-will and a force for oppression.

Welcome to our Looking-Glass world.

In reading Victor Davis Hanson's powerful editorial on the tragic way in which our age has abdicated its control over the monumental legacy of Western civilization, one might feel inclined towards despair.  Although he finishes his piece on an optimistic note, the theme, trajectory, and overarching conclusions aren't particularly encouraging.  But we must draw a distinction between the rhetorical value of providing a thoroughgoing taxonomic analysis calculated to motivate and the perpetuation of our culturally inbred self-loathing that has clearly abetted our foes, the Islamic terrorists.

As Mr. Hanson obliquely observes, the affluence the West enjoys is a poor metric for its overall civic and cultural health.  The defense of the values and principles that has led to our unprecedented economic expansion in the last hundred years, not to mention the way in which democracies have multiplied, has itself become endangered.  No longer is the free world convinced that the democratic precepts articulated by Pericles and since his time expanded, codified, and institutionalized, are the most reliable guarantor of individual freedom, regardless of ethnicity or culture.

Indeed, the civic diffidence we bring to the international table has not gone unnoticed by Islamic leaders worldwide and they have easily outwitted us in the high-stakes game of exploitation predicated on the wholly ill-advised nature of our rules of engagement. 

As Mr. Hanson further demonstrates, Europe is the source of nearly every civic and cultural ill in modern times.  It was, after all, the catalyst of two world wars, both of which were preventable, albeit for different reasons, and it is now the front line in the war of ideas and its attrition rate is alarming, to say the least.  There is, in Europe's deprecation of our hallowed traditions, an intellectual apostasy that seems intent upon elevating stupidity to a virtue.

The very ideas that have laid the groundwork that made possible our freedom of expression, the security of written contracts, and the sanctity of international trade agreements, are themselves the target of scorn and civic heresy.  Further, although it's inarguable that the Islamists made a deliberate if profoundly misguided decision to eschew the acquisition of those ideas and the assimilation of the mechanisms that all but guarantee economic success, we are culturally impotent to make that argument in polite company.

As Mr. Hanson argues, although cynicism has been an abiding if corrosive parasite throughout the ages, one that has often undermined our faith in ourselves,

...our loss of faith in ourselves is now more nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family, religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear.

Free civilizations, ancient an modern, have always been buffeted by the whips and scorns of adverse cultural influences, but it would surely test the limits of reason to deny that ours has moved from the realm of the merely self-questioning to that of the overtly self-destructive.

Psychiatric anthropologists may one day shed light on the etiology of that impulse and how it blossomed into a pernicious and insidious pestilence, but our immediate concern is how best to ensure it's timely demise.  Our only hope is to bring a needed candor to this battle of ideas and to recognize that not only are our Western traditions and values the most advanced example of civic symmetry, those of our Islamic foes are unambiguous examples human failure at its zenith.

Moreover, we must redact from our cultural lexicon the language of apology and self-abnegation and we might begin by demanding that our enemy provide evidence for the superiority of their values as manifest in their inestimable economic successes, their technological prowess, and the scrupulous way in which they safeguards the personal freedoms of their people.

Juxtaposing their Neo-lithic values and culture with ours would provide the reassurance necessary to better understand that our quality of life didn't happen by accident.  That, indeed, it was nurtured and defended by the brains and blood of millions who left their imprints, large or small, evident or shadowy, in every aspect of our modern day lives.

In a 60 Minutes interview with General John Abazaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Lara Logan coyly framed a question with the qualifier that the U.S. is trying to re-engineer our defeat.  The General cut her off in mid-sentence and said "defeat" is her word, not his.  In rhetoric that most of us have been accustomed to suffering, Ms. Logan begins with a false, politically freighted conclusion, then adroitly buries it in the heart of a question.

Perhaps it's because our traditional notion of victory seems so misplaced in Iraq, not to mention our war against the Islamic extremists, but it's become clear that reporters with a transparently liberal bias continue to exploit the unique nature of asymmetrical warfare to illustrate that, by their peculiar calculation, our efforts aren't producing the desired effect.  In fact, in our current efforts, both in Iraq and globally, degrading the enemy while attempting to establish the rudiments of self-determination, are the very hallmarks of victory, albeit incremental victory.

Indeed, our military has only begun to adequately adjust to this new and daunting form of warfare so it's not surprising that most Americans have yet to successfully make the paradigm shift to accommodate the unique nature of the asymmetrical battlefield.  It's not only a change in thinking, it's one that is also disconcerting because it puts us at a stipulated disadvantage.

Couple that with the fact that this war is more ideologically driven than any we've encountered and you can better understand the challenges we face in terms of successfully arguing the case to the American people.  Indeed, at least the barbarians of ancient times had the ostensible goal of land acquisition, controlling trade routes, or outright economic subjugation.

No such comforting conventions exist in this war which makes the argument from our liberal new-world appeasers all the more impotent.  That is, capitulation, regardless of degree or sincerity of abjectness, is guaranteed to produce absolutely no measurable change in this enemy's designs to exterminate the West. 

All of this is becoming incrementally apparent, even to those who suffer from a pattern recognition deficit and fail to see in the past quarter century the steady drum beat of Islamic revanchism and hegemonic intent.  Christopher Hitchens' editorial in Slate this week provides convincing evidence of the juggernaut that is Islamism in its current incarnation.  There is, in his analysis, the scent of inevitability, one driven by the jihadists' designs and apparent intransigence vis a vis any negotiations (a la Baker, Hamilton and the Iraqi Study Group).

Mr. Hitchens finishes his piece with a delightful rejoinder to the club of clowns that argues that it's America's presence in Iraq that is fueling the horrific violence:

Those who blame the violence in Baghdad on the American presence must have a hard job persuading themselves that the mayhem in Beirut and Afghanistan--and the mayhem that is being planned and is still to come--is attributable to the same cause.

The grim reality is that we're obliged to recalibrate our definition of victory to accommodate the foe we face, and that--the Lara Logans of the world aside--means achieving a nominal stability in Iraq while working aggressively to undermine the efforts of the Islamic extremists worldwide.

Principled leadership in times such as these is paramount because the enemy is at once omnipresent and indefatigable.  If we permit political posturing and positioning to play a role in our strategic efforts we'll be foredoomed to failure. 

Some may still believe that the political gains that may accrue from compromising on an aggressive strategy to take the war to the enemy--in particular on such initiatives as the NSA surveillance program--is an acceptable quid pro quo, but their numbers appear to be dwindling. 

If that's true we can thank President Bush and the handful of real Congressional Republicans, who, their other shortcomings notwithstanding, do understand what is truly at stake.

Although President Bush and Vice President Cheney are in the Middle East for a brisk round of intense diplomatic meetings concerning Iraq, Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Turkey tomorrow has far more gravitas and its outcome may be dispositive with respect to our more lethal battle, which is with radical Islamism.

Janet Daley's analysis in the U.K. Telegraph makes frightfully clear that the threat of this modern strain of Islamism, is an ideology predicated on a bellicose interpretation of a religion, one that the West is working diligently to ignore or minimize.  As has been argued here, the West's traditional mechanisms for dealing with belligerents are of no utility with radical Islamism because it is immune from reason or appeals to normal forms of communication.  Indeed, every convention and tool that has historically been employed to leverage favored behavior, even those case hardened with demonstrable threats, are wholly inadequate with these savages.

The Pope's argument, as articulated in his lecture at Regensburg, is that a fundamental and crucial difference between Christianity and Islamism is that the former uses the tenants of reason as a kind of intellectual interlocutor with faith.  In contrast, the latter holds its notional God above all which, it logically follows, permits all forms of religious despotism and subjugation of civilizations.  The response by many in the Islamic world, which included riots and the murder of a nun, only corroborated that dichotomy.

Further, as Daley correctly argues, whether or not Islamism is inherently violent is entirely moot because untold millions of Muslims have taken up the cause of the violent overthrow of Western civilization.  However, Daley's exhortation that moderate Muslims should condemn violence has not, to date, been much in evidence. 

If that continues, if it takes the Pope to make the case on behalf of moderate Muslims, it's a sign that this struggle will be indefinite and bloody.  Unless the West in general and the U.S. in particular begins to take this threat seriously it will continue to cascade and coalesce, and it will inevitably include weapons of mass destruction.

It may not be the end of civilization as we know it but it will radicalize our way of life and necessitate deep compromises with respect to our civil liberties, in ways that make the NSA surveillance program look positively benign. 

Unfortunately, the educational process concerning the truth of radical Islamism is stymied by those among us who subscribe to the doctrine that all religions are equal, and that most Muslims are moderate and disavow violence.  Their propensity to forgive aggressors and to appease the violent is as inexcusable and misguided today as it was in 1938.

The inability to make meaningful distinctions based on hard evidence is probably a learned behavior but that is another moot point because unless we're willing to aggressively combat this pestilence it will protract the battle and increase the casualty rate.  It's that simple.

That our nation's traditions, in particular its Christian traditions, have recently endured a steady series of cultural and civic attacks is incontestable.  Yet, whenever cultural conservatives mount a counteroffensive, liberals typically provide analyses that deal only with the symptoms conveniently eschewing the substance. 

Exhibit A is Joel Connelly's editorial in Seattle's Post-Intelligencer, which argues that Christ's message is in no manner diminished or compromised by the recent movement to eliminate religious references from our marketplace.  Recall that from Wal-Mart to every store in our myriad malls, evidence of Christmas has been redacted by the purveyors of political correctness whose exquisite sensibilities have excised all things religious from our civic lexicon. 

This year we're seeing a counter-revolution, in part because retailing executives recognize they have unwittingly alienated a broad swath of shoppers, and, critically, that those who don't celebrate Christmas aren't offended by a Wal-Mart greeter issuing a friendly "Merry Christmas." 

Connelly's contention is that "...Americans are being victimized by an issue manufactured by ideologues."  Let's take a closer look.

Ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum are the canaries in the political mineshaft and each can be forgiven when they believe their core principles are being eviscerated, incrementally or otherwise.  Therefore, it's a particularly grievous paradox of the left that they defend their own extremist elements--whether it's anti-war libs or environmentalists--who sound the alarm to enlighten the ignorant masses but, as Connelly's editorial demonstrates, they are unwilling to grant conservatives the same courtesy.

Mr. Connelly finishes his piece with an exhortation for conservatives-- whom he obliquely implies do not donate to charitable causes--to focus their energy on the poor and disadvantaged.  It's a wonderful political role reversal because the cornerstone of the left's polity is their cynical belief that people won't give of their own free will, so we must resort to confiscatory tax policies to assist those in need.  In stark contrast, the right firmly believes that people naturally respond to the needy among them and that the most reliable expression of real concern springs from the heart not taxation.

The truth is that over the past 50 years all things hallowed have been under a sustained attack from liberalism, from traditional marriage to our Judeo-Christian heritage, and it's only those who see the world through the distorting lens of liberalism who would argue otherwise. 

Indeed, their views of religion and tradition are far more closely allied with those of our brethren across the pond than with mainstream Americans.  The problem is that the folks in Peoria are less intimately acquainted with how this onslaught has undermined the traditional values that were tacitly recognized as the civic glue that held our Republic together.

But they certainly have an inkling, because a cursory glimpse into our public school system--with text books that teach homosexuality as merely another of our many choices and provide training on condom etiquette, and professors such as Ward Churchill who called the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns"--would provide convincing testimony.

Mr. Connelly disingenuously asks, "How does the use of the word 'Christmas' by Kmart or Wal-Mart help anyone to prepare to celebrate the Nativity," which purposely misses the point.  To wit, the left's jihad against Christmas has been so successful that it's taken conservatives in the trenches to once again provide the cultural license for merchants to make that decision based on their own self-interest.

That the Connelly's of the world argue that it's only ideological extremists churning up our cultural waters and that the attacks on our sacred traditions are nothing more than a chimera is evidence of the fact that the counter-revolution is finally gaining momentum.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

It has been correctly observed that intelligence and wisdom are not strongly correlated.  Evidence of that axiom mounts daily and a case in point is David Ignatius' moribund editorial in today's Washington Post.  Those familiar with Mr. Ignatius know him as a bright and thoughtful lifelong journalist with impeccable credentials, but one clearly influenced by modern-day liberalism's defeatist attitude.

The premise of his piece, which amounts to the twofold and entirely reasonable notion that the Middle East needs the rule of law and that Arabs must take a prominent role, is shrouded in the left's negativism concerning America's role.  Mr. Ignatius also taints his premise with the nostrum that the United Nations must be the political standard bearer in that process.  A more anemic and corrupt organization would be difficult to find and therein lies the most damning criticism and proof that, his professional credentials notwithstanding, wisdom has remained elusive.

A primary reflex of the left is that America can have no constructive role in positively influencing a nation that may be susceptible to rudimentary democracy--at least when led by a Republican administration--because every effort is stigmatized at the outset with the condemnation that, as Mr. Ignatius states, we're preaching.

This bit of misguided moralizing is itself a political echo of an historical imperialism, the mere mention of which, makes liberals blanch with self-loathing.  Somehow, in the eyes of liberals, America, which is the very embodiment of a Republic with resilient guarantees of civil liberties, a nation that has coined and arguably perfected the governing paradigm of bifurcated church-and-state, is inherently suspect when it dares to recommend that others follow its example.

Mr. Ignatius writes about the illness that has plagued the Middle East as though it were a recent revelation.  There is in that assertion a stupidity that has been in incubation for decades, but since it was always on a distant horizon we simply ignored it.

Indeed, we've known that the region is a political backwater populated by ineradicable despots and tyrants that, besides oil, produces nothing but problems.  Now that their archaic polity has blossomed in a most pernicious manner the U.S. and its allies are obliged to take notice.

Although 9/11 was something of a tocsin, it was one that sounded belatedly and has therefore already lost much of its symbolism as a timeless reminder of the threat we face.  Therefore, as the civilized world stands idly by in a perverse replay of 1938, North Korea is rapidly developing a delivery system for its nuclear warheads, one that will easily reach the continental U.S.  Similarly, Iran has flouted the international community's will--such as it is--and continues to move towards a total mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle.

As reported in major newspapers today, the latest attempt to bring a modicum of order to Iraq and to stem Iran's saber rattling, is efforts by the U.S. to co-opt the Saudis and others as a counterbalance.  While that may produce meaningful results, and may be the only template possible in light of lack of political will to take stronger measures, given the way in which Iran negotiates--which makes the Mafia look positively candid and forthright by comparison--it will only postpone the inevitable.

Dealing with unpleasant realities is the very essence of what it means to be an adult, and, as we all know, cleverly avoiding them is myopic and almost always counterproductive.  Yet, in our day and age, that same lesson seems to be scrambled when translated to international affairs. 

So it is that what any sane man would recognize as a categorically thoughtless approach achieves the mantle of a cutting-edge strategy, because it is predicated on the notion that we're dealing with reasonable interlocutors.  Nothing could be further from the truth and the fact that there is a broad consensus among the soft diplomacy elites worldwide is itself credible evidence that it will only prolong the agony, while allowing Iran to achieve a nuclear capability.

There is credible evidence that in our age of relative plenty and nominal security the holiday of Thanksgiving has lost some of its original meaning.  We still give thanks for our families, friends, and even the liberties we so often take for granted, but the values and principles imbued in our forebears out of necessity rather than choice have clearly become endangered.

Because the proximity of the things for which we are typically thankful is not the full or best measure of their value, we might turn to the words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, which raise the more fundamental and therefore profound reasons for being thankful.

Written at a time when the future of our Republic was still uncertain, when great moral divisions seethed and civic unity was little more than an abstraction, Lincoln entreated the nation to a higher cause, one that has the ring of timelessness and purity of principle.  Premised on the fact that our nation was founded on the precepts of Liberty, Lincoln questioned whether:

...that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

This was no idle speculation for he also observed that the occasion for his speech was to dedicate the battlefield where so many gave "the last full measure of devotion" so that the nation might endure. 

Now, nearly 150 years later, we find ourselves on a wholly different but nonetheless real battlefield, one we did not seek but from which we must not retreat.  Prescient leadership is more than charisma and principle, it is ultimately the rare aptitude to exploit political calculus to minimize the risk of catastrophic failure. 

During the three major wars of the last century there were many harrowing moments when that leadership was tested and when the nation held its collective breath with a mounting sense of doom and despair because the outcomes were by no means certain.

We now face a Janus-faced challenge, first, the asymmetrical and omnipresent enemy in the form of the Islamic jidhadists, and second, our own internal doubts about the degree to which this threat constitutes a lethality worthy of great sacrifice.  There is also a collateral doubt concerning the beachhead where one facet of that war is being conducted.

These are legitimate concerns and our ongoing national debate will define both whether we will continue to bring the battle to the enemy and, crucially, the choice of the leadership we trust most to execute that strategy.  Although most Americans believe this threat is real, many question whether it demands the level of urgency and sustained response that Republicans generally believe it does.  While that debate rages, it would be much preferred that we not discover the truth in the form of another brutal attack on our homeland.

As we give thanks to God for our many blessings--those seen and unseen--we might also recognize that threats to our freedom come in many guises and on many fronts, and that the fragility of freedom demands eternal vigilance. 

Reflecting on the untold thousands who have made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf, we should take to heart the closing lines of Lincoln's speech:

...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In times when our nation has had a tacit recognition of the traditional values that have been tested in the crucible of time, the resulting cultural homogeneity produced both civility and such desirable outcomes as low out-of-wedlock birth rates.  As reported this week, that rate is at an all time high and is inversely related to our culture's overall trajectory.

After working our way through the article's discouraging statistics, we come to the meta-message, paradoxically delivered by Dr. Yolanda Wimberly, an adolescent medicine specialist at Atlanta's Morehouse School of Medicine:

More women in their 30s and 40s are hearing their biological clock, and are choosing to give birth despite their single status.  Younger women are not as worried about not being married, she added.  "I think it's more acceptable in society" to have a child without getting married, she said.

Mere acceptance of various behaviors is arguably a poor indicator of our collective moral worth because a longitudinal view of the past 50 years would demonstrate a steady descent into a cultural maelstrom which has produced a bitter and noxious fruit.

There is, in Dr. Wimberly's casual and apparently benign comment, an added worry for those concerned about the growing marginalization of men in society.  Their erstwhile indispensability has been savaged by a strain of virulent feminism that has disparaged and stigmatized masculinity and its cousin, authority.  But, as history unequivocally demonstrates, nature won't be denied, and that genetic marker in boys and men is expressing itself in peculiar and not altogether healthy ways.

A secondary insight worthy of exploration is the fact that young women deliberately having children out-of-wedlock boldly, if ignobly illustrates the narcissistic impulse so prevalent in our culture.  The quaint notion of commitment, love, marriage, and the moral glue that sustains it--sacrifice--have all suffered at the hand of a blinkered reflex to satisfy a momentary instinct that, these women's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, cannot be fully understood when isolated from the natural context of matrimony.

Beyond those more subtle observations, the more mundane but nonetheless potent criticism is that the past two decades have demonstrated that children of single parents are far more likely to inherit a broad array of social, psychological, and economic stigmas that will inhibit their ability for success in life.

That, perhaps, is the quintessence of selfishness, for it provides an abundance of evidence that these women's values are skewed such that they gladly sacrifice the chances for a normal life for their very own offspring to sate their thoughtless procreative instinct.

Welcome to our Brave New World.

Except in novels that aren't grounded in history, wars are rarely if ever won exclusively on the battlefield.  There are typically contiguous nations and regional strategems that directly inhibit or advance the chances for victory.  Jed  Babbin's editorial in The American Spectator makes this very argument with respect to Iraq but with a cogency rarely seen among critics, civilian or retired military. 

His argument commands a deeper respect because he persuasively makes the case that the counsel of our elder statesmen--Baker, Kissinger et al--ought to be summarily dismissed.

Although we can afford their views the respect they deserve, the Cold Warriors' perspective of the war in Iraq is one inevitably mired in the soft diplomacy that had a legitimate place in a time that long preceded the asymmetrical-terrorist foe that has emerged from the shadows.  Mr. Babbin correctly understands that the road to victory in Iraq begins in Tehran and Damascus because the geopolitical and military fulcrum is centered equally in those two capitals.

The tendency of those fighting the last major war--i.e., the Cold War--is to view these adversaries as traditional states interested in the usual list of hegemonic goals such as land acquisition, economic advantage, or nominal subjugation of a neighbor.  Would that the war in Iraq were so mundane.  Reading Mark Steyn's, America Alone, the uninitiated are exposed to the Islamic extremists' real agenda and that is the absolute annihilation of the West, and they bring to their task a grim, remorseless, and savage sense of conviction.

We can play the political parlor games, a la lengthy articles in Foreign Affairs, and ascribe to the enemy nuanced designs for parity on the world stage or the reflex to redress decades-old grievances.  But those kinds of academic dialogs are uniquely unproductive when it comes to mounting a credible offensive, one that can leverage otherwise intransigent leaders such as Basher al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into some semblance of compliance.

With the war in Iraq framed in this manner we can better appreciate that although a regional solution is required there are few allies to assist the U.S. in crafting the kind of coalition necessary to prevail.  The key to this conundrum is to understand that our traditional notion of victory must be substantially retrofitted to meet the special circumstances we face.

That means beginning with the kind of message to these belligerents that a modern-day Winston Churchill might employ.  It's most prominent features would be an unparalleled clarity of purpose and an unwavering sense of resolve.  In short, Iran and Syria must understand that they are not in control of the Middle East, that there is a new civic polity in place in Iraq, one of rudimentary self-determination, and that their interventions are working at cross purposes and are therefore unacceptable.

Those nations, and along with them but to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have everything to lose if Iraq succeeds in becoming a beacon of freedom in land that this wholly antagonistic to any hint of Western influences.  For these are nations ruled by dictators that exploit religion to ensure the perpetuation of their power and the continued subjugation of their people.  It's a despicable and hateful way to govern and it's for those reasons and the untold millions of their citizens who suffer under their theocratic rule, that we must continue this battle. 

This will take a Herculean effort in terms of cobbling together a coalition for the obvious reason that the civilized world has been in a regressive mode for several decades and is now at a stage where taking arms against a sea of troubles is something of a chimera.

But since the threat of Islamic extremism has insinuated its lethal tentacles into every corner and crevice of our globe and because of the demographic realities so disturbingly described in Mr. Steyn's book, we do not have the luxury of time, nor can we prevail with anything less than a robust international commitment.

That is the question that Victor Davis Hanson asks in a comprehensive rejoinder to the mass historical and civic ignorance that pervades so much of American thought concerning Iraq and our war against the Islamic extremists.  As always, Professor Hanson frames the central issues with surgical precision informed by aptly selected historical evidence.

It's not unwarranted to deduce from the results of our recent election a widespread cultural diffidence with respect to the evil we face in the jihadists, as well as a remarkable inability to connect the war in Iraq with the broader war against the jihadists. 

Although the report due soon from James Baker and Lee Hamilton will doubtlessly be thoughtful and well reasoned, many analysts see in its anachronistic underpinnings the predisposition to protract rather abbreviate our war with the Islamic barbarians.

Embedded in our cultural and civic timorousness is a fundamental misappraisal of this enemy.  The attacks of the past 25 years, beginning with the 1983 attack on our Marine barracks in Beirut and ending with 9/11, but including since then those in Spain and London, are merely the opening salvo in what will be a decades long war of ideas, one that now includes the nascent threat of nuclear weapons.  In light of that our collective sense of denial seems particulary obtuse not to mention lethal.

If you asked the average American what role the Sykes-Picot Agreement may have played in Osama bin Laden's desire to eliminate the West in general and the United States in particular, you would probably see a raised eyebrow and a shrug.  Yet, that 1916 agreement, which Mr. bin Laden has quoted on several occasions, created the framework of revanchist animosity that was itself a holdover of the Muslims' searing hatred of the West, compliments of Great Britain's 19th century imperialist impulse.

With the sectarian violence in Iraq showing no signs of abating and with mounting evidence of both al Qaeda's and Iran's determination to acquire a nuclear capability, the U.S., in contrast, is moving rapidly towards political impotence.  Critically, these arch foes have an understanding of our vulnerabilities that is factually grounded and supported by our cultural aversion to wars with no apparent horizon.

As Professor Hanson astutely observes, the challenges Americans have historically confronted and their attendant lessons were poorly learned and, to put it charitably, imperfectly transferred to the next generation.  As such, our nation is eminently ill-equipped to face this most recent challenge, ironically, one that is perhaps the greatest we will ever face. 

Unless we are able to parse the savage message of these pre-modern barbarians and commit to their utter destruction, we will find ourselves in a compromised position with both the threat of a nuclear attack and the kinds of daily bombings in our major cities that are currently plaguing Iraq.

In war, timing is everything, and the window is closing faster than we thought even a year ago.

In a strategically astute editorial, E.J. Dionne uses a speech by Janet Yellen, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, to persuasively frame the economic challenges facing many Americans in what appears to be a high performing economy.

As Yellen said:

Globalization and skill-biased technological change may have been working in combination to particularly depress the wage gains of those in the middle of the U.S. wage distribution.

Dionne makes clear that for those in the lower economic quintiles, the left's reflex is a "minimum wage hike, guaranteed health insurance, expanded wage subsidies through the Earned Income Tax Credit and unionization."

The soundness of that argument will be less difficult to make in our current political climate where Republican invertebrates dominate, however he then moves to a far more robust argument for the middle class itself, which appears to be Yellen's primary focus.  The remedy for this "crisis" is not just the traditional liberal models of training and education, but rather "remodeling our social insurance systems to provide genuine economic security for all working Americans." 

Drawing from Jacob S. Hacker's book, "The Great Risk Shift" that argues that "we are most capable of fully participating in our economy and for our society, most capable of taking risks and looking toward our future, when we have a basic foundation of financial security."  Dionne blithely agrees:  "It's common sense:  Secure people are more likely to be risk-takers."

That Democrats like Dionne have become far more advanced and tactically adroit in their policy recommendations is evidenced by the fact that they are at once intuitively plausible and don't appear to contain the usual insistence upon programs whose primary feature is aggressive income redistribution.  Don't let that mislead you.

The hallmark legacy and prospective plan of the Democrats, their masquerading move toward the center notwithstanding, remains unchanged, and that is their sacred belief in the practice of economic intervention on behalf of a presumably struggling and helpless middle class.

The New Deal and Great Society are the Democrats' tandem legacies that have created deep and immutable policy roots which define the very blueprint of their thinking.  That policy prototype presupposes inherent flaws in our capitalist system which they emotively label unfair, an appellation which is the liberalism's equivalent of the English longbow in such successful battles as that of Agincourt in 1415. 

That sets the stage for the Democrats munificence--that is, with other's capital--to provide a Statist-like economic security blanket for the otherwise 'destitute' middle class.  That it may resonate with a broad swath of Americans is only the product of the masterful way in which our mainstream media, academic elite, and our marionette politicians have successfully  mischaracterized the American dream.

The special lessons learned by individual effort, indeed, by failure and the frustration of apparently unsurmountable obstacles, have been reconstituted as an unacceptable affront, one that can be mitigated or eliminated only with the assistance of our Democratic benefactors.

It's that sense of economic dependency that they cravenly and cynically engender that is both shameful and has the downstream effect civically pauperizing otherwise hard-working Americans. 

The Republicans' charge, which is far more challenging, is to make the case that the Democrats' only interest is power retention and that their modus operandi, it's stated intentions notwithstanding, blunts motivation and leaves our not inconsiderable internal resources effectively untapped. 

That's a policy formulation that provides rewards for phantom efforts while cynically denying our own God-given abilities to marshal resources equal to life's challenges that we all must face.

Regular viewers of CSPAN, in particular its program, Washington Journal, know that it's a magnet for both self-described liberals and liberals who abuse the call-in system by doing so on the Republican line.

Today's morning program with Brian Lamb featured R. Emmett Tyrrell, Editor-in Chief at the American Spectator.  Readers familiar with this journal know it is one of America's premier conservative venues that is intellectually rigorous, and its founder, Mr. Tyrrell, is a seminal conservative thinker with unparalleled credentials.

It was therefore uniquely disappointing when several callers attacked Mr. Tyrrell in an acerbic and sarcastic way which betrayed the fact that the call screeners had dozed at their stations.  Being the consummate gentleman, he responded with aplomb and gentility, but there was no placating one caller who launched a veritable fusillade against him, but it was the kind that made traditional ad homenin attacks look positively substantive by comparison.

That prompted this email from your editor to the producers at CSPAN:

I don't know whether I was more embarrassed for Mr. Lamb or for Mr. Tyrrell, but there is no question that you must be more diligent in screening out repeat lunatic callers. 

Milton Friedman, the economist who perhaps best reflected the vision of our Founding Fathers and an unwavering advocate of Adam Smith's theories, died today at the age of 94.

Although he wrote many books and articles, his 1978 piece titled Is Capitalism Humane is a succinct acquittal of our economic system that has created more prosperity than any other in history.  A pithy quote from that article brings into relief his deep understanding of human nature:

A set of social institutions that stresses individual responsibility...treats the individual as responsible for and to himself, will lead to a higher and more desirable moral climate.

That the reflex that created the New Deal was one of his life-long enemies is axiomatic and he was as anti-Keynesian as one could be.  He also locked horns with John Kenneth Galbraith on many occasions.

His legacy can scarcely be overestimated and the best way to honor him would be to take the time to read his works, which are at once highly educational and an intellectual tour de force.

Opportunity is a delicate phenomenon with an abbreviated shelf-life, one that requires favorable conditions for success, and there is every reason to believe that the Democrats' chances to exploit the opportunities before them in the war in Iraq, the global war against the Islamic extremists, and their expansive domsetic agenda, are slim at best.

Victor Davis Hanson provides evidence of this in an editorial that clarifies the real challenges that have beset the Bush Administration and argues that the way in which the Democrats have framed their criticism effectively undermines their opportunities to succeed.

We see evidence of that already in yesterday's Congressional testimony by General John Abizaid, commander of Middle East operations, who steadfastly maintained that withdrawal timetables, however meticulously calibrated, are strategically misguided.  Senators John McCain, Carl Levin et al, expressed their dismay at what they incorrectly characterized as the general's recommendation for a status quo approach.

Gen. Abazaid rebutted their charge by suggesting the most efficient way to end the war is to augment the training of the Iraqi army, which is something he has and will continue to aggressively pursue.

The truth is that, not unlike many other military challenges the nation has faced, there are no easy answers and those who argue otherwise are ill-informed, unwise, or so politically invested that they qualify for a kind of intellectual recusal. 

Hugh Hewitt's quasi-debate with liberal talk show host Christy Harvey on CSPAN this morning brought to light the Democrats' inexcusably adolescent criticism of the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq, demonstrating that it was an insolent, self-serving strategy that provided persuasive evidence of their inability to lead on crucial issues.

That their criticism was a mixture of ad homenin attacks and politically motivated charges was substantiated by the fact that their only alternative recommendation was a defeatist and unrealistic call for withdrawal.

As the Democrats assume control of Congress it will be a fascinating study in political theatrics to watch as they posit a platform for success in Iraq and continued economic progress at home.  Although the president's authority is most strongly expressed in international affairs and national security, Mr. Bush has encouraged the Democrats to come forward with constructive recommendations for our refractory problems with North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and a host of other quandaries.

With the trouncing today of Rep. John Murtha (who was Rep. Pelosi's favorite) by Rep. Steny Hoyer for Majority Leader, we can see political fault lines emerging that may cleave the party along predictable lines.  If that comes to fruition it will be instructive to see whether the Democrats' self-aggrandizing promises of success in Iraq and a robust domestic agenda will ever see the light of day.