Richard Z. Chesnoff, author of “Pack of Thieves” about the Nazi plundering of European Jews during the WWII era, has long been one of America’s most prominent reporters on foreign affairs. Richard is also the brother of my old friend David Z. Chesnoff, who is one of Las Vegas’ most prominent criminal defense lawyers (and also Britney Spears‘ lawyer in her recent annulment case, but that’s another story).
In this NY Daily News op-ed today, Richard insightfully and succinctly explains Ariel Sharon‘s innovative withdrawal plan in regard to moving the chronically intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict toward resolution:

Sharon’s plan is brilliant in its simplicity – a sort of uncontestable, one-way divorce. Unwilling to wait any longer for the Palestinians to stop terror and negotiate peace seriously, Sharon plans single-handedly to disengage Israeli forces from Gaza, withdraw the 7,000 Jewish settlers who currently live there, turn control of the desert strip over to the Palestinians and begin to do the same in the West Bank by dismantling some Israeli settlements there as well.
At the same time, Sharon announced that Israel plans to complete the controversial security barricade it has been building to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. Moreover, until a final peace settlement is drawn up, several significant West Bank settlements will remain on the Israeli side of the barricade.
Of course, Sharon doesn’t want the Palestinians to see Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as a reward for Arab terrorism. He has been making sure to drive that point home by weakening the terrorists before the Israeli Army pulls out. Hence, the recent targeted killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Saturday’s successful hit on Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the pediatrician-cum-killer who took over from Yassin. In case Hamas & co. still don’t get the message, the Israelis also have announced that even after withdrawal, their army will counterstrike if Gaza-based terrorism continues.
One of the best parts of Sharon’s plan is his offer to turn over the buildings and homes in Israel’s soon-to-be-abandoned Gaza settlements to needy Palestinian families. There’s one condition: Some international body will have to guarantee that the homes actually go to refugee families and not to Hamas terrorists or friends of Arafat and other well-connected Palestinians. Without that guarantee, Sharon said, he’ll have the settlements dynamited before the Israelis leave.
And then there is the most important of all declarations: America is backing the Israelis on their position that the so-called right of return is valid only for entry into a future Palestinian state and not to the Jewish state, thus thwarting the Arab attempt to destroy Israel by cramming millions of so-called Palestinian refugees down its throat.

And Richard concludes with an observation and a recommendation for the Palestinians:

The Palestinians have a long history of rejecting Israeli offers, only to see the dream of peace, prosperity and their own state recede farther over the horizon. This time, they should accept Sharon’s plan not as an outrageous insult but as a great opportunity.
Above all, they should remember that next time, the chances are that they’ll be offered even less.

Victor Davis Hanson’s latest piece on NRO is up. As always, it is worth reading in its entirety, and the following should pique your interest:

We are glad when dictators fall like Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam did. But we all prefer that they tumble spontaneously ? even though we accept privately that such is never the case in this present unipolar world, where all the smug talk about the U.N., EU, and multilateralism means absolutely nothing without the will and skill of the American military. So let us feel terrible about not preempting the genocide in Rwanda; let us hate ourselves for belatedly preempting in vain to save a quarter-million Bosnians and Kosovars in the Balkans; and then let us be ashamed even more that we finally really were preempting to take out a mass-murderer in Iraq ? and let us scream and slur about all this all at once!
Deep down we know that some sort of freedom is what most Iraqis want ? and what Islamic extremists in and outside Iraq most fear. But we wish its creation to proceed flawlessly without loss of blood or treasure. And at all times we insist on gratitude from those we aid, who are humbled, perhaps even furious, because we are giving them precisely what they seek ? but also what in the past they lacked the resources, skill, or courage to obtain on their own.

One day they burn our flag and hurl vile insults. The next day, this. Sigh.

President Bush is not an articulate man, and he is not, as we lawyers like to say, “quick on his feet” in responding to questions extemporaneously (on the other hand, President Clinton was very good at this). However, last night, I thought that the President’s statement at the beginning of his press conference was quite good. Here it is in its entirety:

Good evening. Before I take your questions, let me speak with the American people about the situation in Iraq.
This has been tough weeks in that country. Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by three groups: Some remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime, along with Islamic militants have attacked coalition forces in the city of Fallujah. Terrorists from other countries have infiltrated Iraq to incite and organize attacks. In the south of Iraq, coalition forces face riots and attacks that are being incited by a radical cleric named al-Sadr. He has assembled some of his supporters into an illegal militia, and publicly supported the terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Al-Sadr’s methods of violence and intimidation are widely repudiated by other Iraqi Shia. He’s been indicted by Iraqi authorities for the murder of a prominent Shia cleric.
Although these instigations of violence come from different factions, they share common goals. They want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi people. The violence we have seen is a power grab by these extreme and ruthless elements.
It’s not a civil war; it’s not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis, by far, reject violence and oppose dictatorship. In forums where Iraqis have met to discuss their political future, and in all the proceedings of the Iraqi Governing Council, Iraqis have expressed clear commitments. They want strong protections for individual rights; they want their independence; and they want their freedom.
America’s commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals, and required by our interests. Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country, or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror, and a threat to America and to the world. By helping to secure a free Iraq, Americans serving in that country are protecting their fellow citizens. Our nation is grateful to them all, and to their families that face hardship and long separation.
This weekend, at a Fort Hood hospital, I presented a Purple Heart to some of our wounded; had the honor of thanking them on behalf of all Americans. Other men and women have paid an even greater cost. Our nation honors the memory of those who have been killed, and we pray that their families will find God’s comfort in the midst of their grief. As I have said to those who have lost loved ones, we will finish the work of the fallen.
America’s armed forces are performing brilliantly, with all the skill and honor we expect of them. We’re constantly reviewing their needs. Troop strength, now and in the future, is determined by the situation on the ground. If additional forces are needed, I will send them. If additional resources are needed, we will provide them. The people of our country are united behind our men and women in uniform, and this government will do all that is necessary to assure the success of their historic mission.
One central commitment of that mission is the transfer of sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. We have set a deadline of June 30th. It is important that we meet that deadline. As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation — and neither does America. We’re not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can attest. We are a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest, as well. America’s objective in Iraq is limited, and it is firm: We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq.
Were the coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed. And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand. We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands.
Sovereignty involves more than a date and a ceremony. It requires Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own future. Iraqi authorities are now confronting the security challenge of the last several weeks. In Fallujah, coalition forces have suspended offensive operations, allowing members of the Iraqi Governing Council and local leaders to work on the restoration of central authority in that city. These leaders are communicating with the insurgents to ensure an orderly turnover of that city to Iraqi forces, so that the resumption of military action does not become necessary. They’re also insisting that those who killed and mutilated four American contract workers be handed over for trial and punishment. In addition, members of the Governing Council are seeking to resolve the situation in the south. Al-Sadr must answer the charges against him and disband his illegal militia.
Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country. The transition to sovereignty requires that we demonstrate confidence in Iraqis, and we have that confidence. Many Iraqi leaders are showing great personal courage, and their example will bring out the same quality in others. The transition to sovereignty also requires an atmosphere of security, and our coalition is working to provide that security. We will continue taking the greatest care to prevent harm to innocent civilians; yet we will not permit the spread of chaos and violence. I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force, if necessary, to maintain order and to protect our troops.
The nation of Iraq is moving toward self-rule, and Iraqis and Americans will see evidence in the months to come. On June 30th, when the flag of free Iraq is raised, Iraqi officials will assume full responsibility for the ministries of government. On that day, the transitional administrative law, including a bill of rights that is unprecedented in the Arab world, will take full effect.
The United States, and all the nations of our coalition, will establish normal diplomatic relations with the Iraqi government. An American embassy will open, and an American ambassador will be posted.
According to the schedule already approved by the Governing Council, Iraq will hold elections for a national assembly no later than next January. That assembly will draft a new, permanent constitution which will be presented to the Iraqi people in a national referendum held in October of next year. Iraqis will then elect a permanent government by December 15, 2005 — an event that will mark the completion of Iraq’s transition from dictatorship to freedom.
Other nations and international institutions are stepping up to their responsibilities in building a free and secure Iraq. We’re working closely with the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and with Iraqis to determine the exact form of the government that will receive sovereignty on June 30th. The United Nations election assistance team, headed by Karina Parelli (phonetic), is in Iraq, developing plans for next January’s election. NATO is providing support for the Polish-led multinational division in Iraq. And 17 of NATO’s 26 members are contributing forces to maintain security.
Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld, and a number of NATO defense and foreign ministers are exploring a more formal role for NATO, such as turning the Polish-led division into a NATO operation, and giving NATO specific responsibilities for border control.
Iraqi’s neighbors also have responsibilities to make their region more stable. So I am sending Deputy Secretary of State Armitage to the Middle East to discuss with these nations our common interest in a free and independent Iraq, and how they can help achieve this goal.
As we’ve made clear all along, our commitment to the success and security of Iraq will not end on June 30th. On July 1st, and beyond, our reconstruction assistance will continue, and our military commitment will continue. Having helped Iraqis establish a new government, coalition military forces will help Iraqis to protect their government from external aggression and internal subversion.
The success of free government in Iraq is vital for many reasons. A free Iraq is vital because 25 million Iraqis have as much right to live in freedom as we do. A free Iraq will stand as an example to reformers across the Middle East. A free Iraq will show that America is on the side of Muslims who wish to live in peace, as we have already shown in Kuwait and Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan. A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America’s word, once given, can be relied upon, even in the toughest times.
Above all, the defeat of violence and terror in Iraq is vital to the defeat of violence and terror elsewhere; and vital, therefore, to the safety of the American people. Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver.
The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorist who takes hostages, or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali, and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.
We’ve seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.
None of these acts is the work of a religion; all are the work of a fanatical, political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women. They seek the death of Jews and Christians, and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror. They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other. And they seek weapons of mass destruction, to blackmail and murder on a massive scale.
Over the last several decades, we’ve seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed. And the enemy has seen, over the last 31 months, that we will no longer live in denial or seek to appease them. For the first time, the civilized world has provided a concerted response to the ideology of terror — a series of powerful, effective blows.
The terrorists have lost the shelter of the Taliban and the training camps in Afghanistan. They’ve lost safe havens in Pakistan. They lost an ally in Baghdad. And Libya has turned its back on terror. They’ve lost many leaders in an unrelenting international manhunt. And perhaps most frightening to these men and their movement, the terrorists are seeing the advance of freedom and reform in the greater Middle East.
A desperate enemy is also a dangerous enemy, and our work may become more difficult before it is finished. No one can predict all the hazards that lie ahead, or the costs they will bring. Yet, in this conflict, there is no safe alternative to resolute action. The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable. Every friend of America and Iraq would be betrayed to prison and murder as a new tyranny arose. Every enemy of America and the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers.
We will succeed in Iraq. We’re carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change: Iraq will be a free, independent country, and America and the Middle East will be safer because of it. Our coalition has the means and the will to prevail. We serve the cause of liberty, and that is, always and everywhere, a cause worth serving.
Now, I’ll be glad to take your questions. I will start with you.

In this earlier post from last week, historian Victor Davis Hanson expounded on the futility of appeasement. In this longer City Journal piece, Dr. Hanson expands on the consequences and causes of the appeasement of radical Islamic fascists that has occurred over the past 25 years since the radical Iranians seized the American hostages in 1979. The entire piece is an excellent history lesson, and here are a few of Dr. Hanson’s pearls of wisdow:

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants. British and French restraint over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the absorption of the Czech Sudetenland, and the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia did not win gratitude but rather Hitler?s contempt for their weakness. Fifty million dead, the Holocaust, and the near destruction of European civilization were the wages of ?appeasement??a term that early-1930s liberals proudly embraced as far more enlightened than the old idea of ?deterrence? and ?military readiness.?
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As long ago as the fourth century b.c., Demosthenes warned how complacency and self-delusion among an affluent and free Athenian people allowed a Macedonian thug like Philip II to end some four centuries of Greek liberty?and in a mere 20 years of creeping aggrandizement down the Greek peninsula. Thereafter, these historical lessons should have been clear to citizens of any liberal society: we must neither presume that comfort and security are our birthrights and are guaranteed without constant sacrifice and vigilance, nor expect that peoples outside the purview of bourgeois liberalism share our commitment to reason, tolerance, and enlightened self-interest.
Most important, military deterrence and the willingness to use force against evil in its infancy usually end up, in the terrible arithmetic of war, saving more lives than they cost. All this can be a hard lesson to relearn each generation, especially now that we contend with the sirens of the mall, Oprah, and latte. Our affluence and leisure are as antithetical to the use of force as rural life and relative poverty once were catalysts for muscular action. The age-old lure of appeasement?perhaps they will cease with this latest concession, perhaps we provoked our enemies, perhaps demonstrations of our future good intentions will win their approval?was never more evident than in the recent Spanish elections, when an affluent European electorate, reeling from the horrific terrorist attack of 3/11, swept from power the pro-U.S. center-right government on the grounds that the mass murders were more the fault of the United States for dragging Spain into the effort to remove fascists and implant democracy in Iraq than of the primordial al-Qaidist culprits, who long ago promised the Western and Christian Iberians ruin for the Crusades and the Reconquista.

Then, after describing the numerous specific attrocities that radical Islamic fascists perpetrated on the United States through four administrations, and the failure of any of those administrations to confront the fascists effectively, Dr. Hanson observes as follows:

[T]he primary cause for our surprising indifference to the events leading up to September 11 lies within ourselves. Westerners always have had a propensity for complacency because of our wealth and freedom; and Americans in particular have enjoyed a comfortable isolation in being separated from the rest of the world by two oceans.

Finally, Dr. Hanson lays it on the line with both Democratic and Republican Administrations’ failure to confront the leading exporter of radical Islamic fascism, Saudi Arabia:

Neither oil-concerned Republicans nor multicultural Democrats were ready to expose the corrupt American relationship with Saudi Arabia. No country is more culpable than that kingdom in funding extremist madrassas and subsidizing terror, or more antithetical to liberal American values from free speech to religious tolerance. But Saudi propagandists learned from the Palestinians the value of constructing their own victimhood as a long-oppressed colonial people. Call a Saudi fundamentalist mullah a fascist, and you can be sure you?ll be tarred as an Islamophobe.
Even when Middle Easterners regularly blew us up, the Clinton administration, unwilling to challenge the new myth of Muslim victimhood, transformed Middle Eastern terrorists bent on destroying America into wayward individual criminals who did not spring from a pathological culture. Thus, Clinton treated the first World Trade Center bombing as only a criminal justice matter?which of course allowed the United States to avoid confronting the issue and taking on the messy and increasingly unpopular business the Bush administration has been engaged in since September 11. Clinton dispatched FBI agents, not soldiers, to Yemen and Saudi Arabia after the attacks on the USS Cole and the Khobar Towers. Yasser Arafat, responsible in the 1970s for the murder of a U.S. diplomat in the Sudan, turned out to be the most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton Oval Office.

Take the time to read the entire article. Dr. Hanson is shooting straight with us, and it is not comforting. Thanks to my friend Bill Hesson for the pointer to the article.

This NY Times article reports on yet another tragic result of the law of unintended consequences — the ban on DDT that the wealthy West pushed on Third World countries has caused millions of deaths from malaria.

This NY Times story provides the basis for the theory that the four victims of the Fallujah incident last week were set up for the ambush.

It’s sad to say, but most Americans are informed on current events through television news reports that are intrinsically superficial in nature. As a result, opinions are often formed through emotional reactions to images, as opposed to thoughtful consideration and discussion of underlying issues.
Take, for example, this week’s increase in Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-led coalition. Television news reports show graphic images of the fighting and the casualities, but rarely explores the underlying political struggles that are at the root of the violence.
In this op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal ($), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist and currently a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, provides an excellent overview of the political conflicts that are causing the current uptick in violence in Iraq. The entire piece is a must read, and here are a few of Mr. Gerecht’s pertinent points:

The dogged violence in the Sunni areas of Iraq since early summer has fortified the impression throughout the Shiite community that the historic Sunni will to power did not end with the fall of Saddam Hussein and the collapse of the Baath Party. Privately, if not publicly, senior Shiite clerics [including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s pre-eminent Shiite divine] are thankful that the Americans have persevered in their country. Shiites are, however, also uneasy and embarrassed by America’s occupation, by the need for American protection. It is enormously difficult for the Shiite clergy, which has a profound sense of being the country’s most steadfast defender against both foreign and domestic enemies, to be beholden to Americans (and their former British overlords). It is difficult to forgive the Americans for the “betrayal” — the ugly word in Arabic is khiyana — in 1991, when George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraqis to rise up, the Shiites did, and Saddam slaughtered them by the tens of thousands while U.S. aircraft flew overhead.

Mr. Gerecht then explains how Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who is leading most of the current Iraqi resistance, fits into the picture:

Muqtada al-Sadr is an unaccomplished young cleric who has no chance to prosper through the normal channels of scholarly advancement. Like Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, he intends to shake, if not destroy, the traditional establishment so that explicitly political clerics, who are more fond of street power than of Islamic law, can become the de facto rulers of Iraq. He and his followers need chaos to thrive. They are gambling that they can spark the propensity for violence in Iraqi society and produce a chain reaction that Ayatollah Sistani cannot stop. Ideally, the Grand Ayatollah will have no choice but to join the ranks of the young firebrand. What charisma Sadr possesses derives in great part from his ability to encourage such violence and survive. And his allure has grown enormously owing to American incompetence.
By early fall 2003, it was perfectly clear to the Shiite clergy, as well as to the Pentagon, that Sadr had been complicitous in the death of American soldiers, yet the CPA did not seize him. All Iraqis, particularly the traditional clergy, know that Sadr has an awe-inspiring bloodline — his uncle Baqir al-Sadr, murdered by Saddam in 1980, was one of the great radical Shiite clerics of the 20th century; and Muqtada’s father, Sadiq al-Sadr, was a relatively inconsequential cleric, once favored by Saddam, who, as he rose, bravely challenged the dictator until he, too, was assassinated in 1999. America’s early inaction against Sadr has made it much more difficult for the traditional clergy to dismiss him as an uneducated and thuggish son of a noble family.

Then, he addresses the key political problem within Iraq:

Sadr has played on a growing perception in the Shiite community that the Transitional Administrative Law — the interim constitution that will, in theory, guide Iraqi politics until a final constitution can be written in an elected constituent assembly — is an unfair and unworkable document. Americans and highly Westernized Iraqis are proud of the Law’s guarantees for individual, especially, women’s rights. However, it cedes authority over any future constitution to “two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates,” who have the power to veto a final document. This means the Kurds, who are likely to vote as a bloc, have essentially complete control over the future shape of any Iraqi democracy.
For Ayatollah Sistani, and probably for most Shiites, this grants the Kurds, for whom the Shiites have until now borne no ill will, too much power. The Kurds, who are 20% of the population and have been brutalized for decades by Sunni Arab regimes, of course don’t see it that way. Shiite objections, which are unlikely to go away, will be a serious challenge for the CPA, which desperately wants to believe that it currently has a workable blueprint for a transitional Iraqi government. Quite understandably, it has no desire to open up the Administrative Law to a rewrite, particularly since Iraq has become more volatile, and agreement among Iraqis could even be more difficult to achieve than before.
However, we all need to understand the risk the U.S. is running by refusing to have a more open, public debate in Iraq about the transitional constitution and government. If the Shiites have the impression that they are once again being cheated of an effective democratic majority, then it is entirely possible that the consensus among Shiites about America’s beneficial presence in their country could quickly end. Sadr’s argument to his flock — that military force is the best way to ensure a Shiite victory — could start to look very appealing.

Finally, Mr. Geracht sees as the solution to the current violence:

Muqtada al-Sadr’s guerrilla attacks are a wake-up call for both the Americans and Ayatollah Sistani. The Americans need to crush Sadr’s al-Mahdi army; Sistani needs to ensure he has control in Najaf. And then both parties, plus the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds, need publicly to discuss again, however acrimoniously, the Transitional Administrative Law. The transfer of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 could be a meaningless day if the Shiites see it as a step backward from democracy.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that former President Bush’s decision in 1991 to abandon support for the anti-Saddam forces within Iraq was an unfortunate error. We are now paying the political and military price for that mistake in our current effort to stabilize Iraq. That should make our resolve to succeed greater amid our recognition that it is never easy to bring the relative grace of consensual government to people who have known only brutal repression over the past generation.

Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO column this week explores the futility of appeasement toward radical Islamic fascists. The entire column is excellent, and the following are several of his insightful observations:

The sad truth is that civilization itself is engaged in a worldwide struggle against the barbarism of Islamic fundamentalism. Just this past month the killers and their plots have been uncovered in London, Paris, Madrid, Pakistan, and North Africa ? the same tired rhetoric of their hatred echoing from Iraq to the West Bank. While Western elites quibble over exact ties between the various terrorist ganglia, the global viewer turns on the television to see the same suicide bombing, the same infantile threats, the same hatred of the West, the same chants, the same Koranic promises of death to the unbeliever, and the same street demonstrations across the world.
Looking for exact professed cooperation between an Islamic fascist and the rogue regime that finds such anti-Western violence useful is like proving that Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler all coordinated their attacks and worked in some conspiratorial fashion ? when in fact Japan had no knowledge of the invasion of Russia, and Hitler had no warning of Pearl Harbor or Mussolini’s invasion of Greece.
In fact, it didn’t matter that they were united only by a loose and shared hatred of Western liberalism and emboldened by a decade of democratic appeasement. And our fathers, perhaps better men than we, didn’t care too much for beating their breasts about the exact nature of collective Axis strategy or blaming each other for past lapses, but instead went to pretty terrible places like Bastogne, Anzio, and Okinawa to put an end to their enemies all.
Now, in the middle of this terrible conflict, unlike the postbellum inquiry after Pearl Harbor, we are holding acrimonious hearings about culpability for September 11. And here the story gets even more depressing than just political opportunism and election-year timing. After eight years of appeasement that saw repeated attacks on Americans, Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons under Dr. Khan, and Osama’s 1998 declaration of war against every American, we are suddenly grilling, of all people, Condoleezza Rice ? one of the few key advisers most to be credited for insisting on using our military, rather than the local DA, to defeat these fanatics.
* * *
Everything that the world holds dear ? the free exchange of ideas, the security of congregating and traveling safely, the long struggle for tolerance of differing ideas and religions, the promise of equality between the sexes and ethnic groups, and the very trust that lies at the heart of all global economic relationships ? all this and more Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the adherents of fascism in the Middle East have sought to destroy: some as killers themselves, others providing the money, sanctuary, and spiritual support.
We did not ask for this war, but it came. In our time and according to our station, it is now our duty to end it. And that resolution will not come from recrimination in time of war, nor promises to let fundamentalists and their autocratic sponsors alone, but only through the military defeat and subsequent humiliation of their cause. So let us cease the hysterics, make the needed sacrifices, and allow our military the resources, money, and support with which it most surely will destroy the guilty and give hope at last to the innocent.

Arguably the most insightful commentator on the war against the radical Islamic fascists — Victor Davis Hanson — posts this excellent article with his insights into last week’s debacle at Fallujah:

I am sorry, but these toxic fumes of the Dark-Ages permeate everywhere. It won?t do any more simply to repeat quite logical exegeses. Without consensual government, the poor Arab Middle East is caught in the throes of rampant unemployment, illiteracy, statism, and corruption. Thus in frustration it vents through its state-run media invective against Jews and Americans to assuage the shame and pain. Whatever.
But at some point the world is asking: ?Is Mr. Assad or Hussein, the Saudi Royal Family, or a Khadafy really an aberration?all rogues who hijacked Arab countries?or are they the logical expression of a tribal patriarchal society whose frequent tolerance of barbarism is in fact reflected in its leadership? Are the citizens of Fallujah the victims of Saddam, or did folk like this find their natural identity expressed in Saddam? Postcolonial theory and victimology argue that European colonialism, Zionism, and petrodollars wrecked the Middle East. But to believe that one must see India in shambles, Latin America under blanket autocracy, and an array of suicide bombers pouring out of Mexico or Nigeria. South Korea was a moonscape of war when oil began gushing out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia; why is it now exporting cars while the latter are exporting death? Apartheid was far worse than the Shah?s modernization program; yet why did South Africa renounce nuclear weapons while the Mullahs cheated on every UN protocol they could?

Then, Mr. Hanson lays it on the line:

The enemy of the Middle East is not the West so much as modernism itself and the humiliation that accrues when millions themselves are nursed by fantasies, hypocrisies, and conspiracies to explain their own failures. Quite simply, any society in which citizens owe their allegiance to the tribe rather than the nation, do not believe in democracy enough to institute it, shun female intellectual contributions, allow polygamy, insist on patriarchy, institutionalize religious persecution, ignore family planning, expect endemic corruption, tolerate honor killings, see no need to vote, and define knowledge as mastery of the Koran is deeply pathological.

And sums it up as follows:

I support the bold efforts of the United States to make a start in cleaning up this mess, in hopes that a Fallujah might one day exorcize its demons. But in the meantime, we should have no illusions about the enormity of our task, where every positive effort will be met with violence, fury, hypocrisy, and ingratitude.
If we are to try to bring some good to the Middle East, then we must first have the intellectual courage to confess that for the most part the pathologies embedded there are not merely the work of corrupt leaders but often the very people who put them in place and allowed them to continue their ruin.
So the question remains: did Saddam create Fallujah or Fallujah Saddam?

Read the entire piece. VDH is the essense of clear thinking.