Victor Davis Hanson‘s latest column at National Review Online addresses America’s supposedly new preemption policy in its overall foreign policy. Mr. Hanson observes in a part of his piece:

Despite the current vogue of questionable and therapeutic ideas like “zero tolerance” and “moral equivalence” that punish all who use force ? whether in kindergarten or in the Middle East ? striking first is a morally neutral concept. It takes on its ethical character from the landscape in which it takes place ? the Israelis bombing the Iraqi reactor to avoid being blackmailed by a soon-to-be nuclear Saddam Hussein, or the French going into the Ivory Coast last year, despite the fact that that chaotic country posed no immediate danger to Paris. The thing to keep in mind is that the real aggressor, by his past acts, has already invited war and will do so again ? should he be allowed to choose his own time and place of assault.
Hitler was ruthless in starting a war against Poland. Yet he could have been stopped far earlier in 1936 or so ? had the democracies preempted him. Indeed, a failure to preempt is often far worse than the act itself. Serbia posed no “imminent” threat to the United States in 1998; but President Clinton ? with no U.N. sanction, no U.S. Congress resolution ? finally decided to act and end that cancer before it spread beyond the Balkans.