The Benefits of Boldness

Victor Davis Hanson casts his clear eye on recent history and notes:

Every time the United States the last quarter century had acted boldly its removal of Noriega and aid for the Contras, instantaneous support for a nified Germany, extension of NATO, preference for Yeltsin instead of Gorbachev, Gulf War I, bombing of Milosevic, support for Sharon's fence, withdrawal from Gaza and decapitation of the Hamas killer elite, taking out the Taliban and Saddam-good things have ensued. In contrast, on every occasion that we have - abject withdrawal from Lebanon, appeasement of Arafat at Oslo, a decade of action in the Balkans, paralysis in Rwanda, sloth in the face of terrorist attacks, not going to Baghdad in 1991 - corpses pile up and the United States became either less secure or less respected or both.

Perhaps in politics as well as art, audacity is key.

As Penn Jillette observed, if your field has "science" in its name it probably isn't one. Might'nt it be more honest of universities to offer courses in Political Arts?

Thanks for Sowing the Seeds

Arthur Chrenkoff checks in with a roundup of the past month's good news from Afghanistan.

"Before my arrival in Virginia in August of last year, I had never slept in my own bedroom, attended school with boys, or gone out in public without covering my hair. I never thought I'd come to the USA. The odds were against me: Most people from Afghanistan have never traveled outside its borders," writes Ghizal Miri, a 15-year old Afghan girl who is one of the 40 high school students spending a year in the U.S. under a scholarship program. "Thanks, America, for sowing seeds of freedom in my Afghanistan."

Fatwa Against bin Laden

I've been waiting a long time for something like this, so I'm going to publish it. Muslims have been far too reticent to denounce terrorism since 9/11. What these Spanish Muslims have done is what's been missing.

MADRID, Spain - Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Usama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the Al Qaeda leader.

I hope this is part of the tectonic shift.