Why Victor Davis Hanson Rocks

He unleashes a litany of information regarding our 'bungled' adventure in Iraq. It's not the usual litany of failures, rather it's a lengthy litany of our successes, and the trouble our success there is causing our enemies.

Expect him to be belittled, ignored, but not refuted. There aren't any factual errors in what he says, so they can't attack him on the facts, instead they'll just claim he's painting an improbably rosy picture of what clearly is a continuing failure by the Bush Administration.

If we continue to fail as well as we have been, the world might be a pretty great place by 2030.

Think back 25 years to 1982. All the things Reagan was doing was needlessly provocative, ruinous to our economy, and lacking nuance with regards to the Soviet's legitimate desire to carve out a sphere of influence in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, or at least that was the conventional wisdom at the time.

I think history shows whether the Reagan critics, or Reagan was right back in 1982. Mistakes and bungles were made back then, too. Saddam flourished because we needed him to contain Iran. We helped plant the seeds of the Taliban by not following up with more aid after the Soviet pull out. But I think very few people in the former Warsaw Pact were sad to see that organization dissolve, and our best friends in Europe are those countries that suffered the most under the Soviet boot.

In another 20 years, will a free Kurdistan, peaceful Iraq, and truly democratic Iran be our best allies in the region?

Don't be surprised if it happens, and don't root against it just cause you hate President Bush. Nobody foresaw the fall of the Soviet Empire happening as quickly, and relatively peacefully (former Yugoslavia excepted) as it did. So nobody other than somebody like Victor Davis Hanson is willing to suggest that the hopefulness of The Cedar Revolution (currently hitting a road bump, but the spirit and will to reform remains), and the Purple Fingers, and the amazing prosperity in Arbil are not isolated incidents, but early signs of our inevitable victory over primitive tribalism, even in an area with millennia of tradition honing mutual hatred.

Terrorism is a tool used by failing ideologies, and power mad nihilists. Terrorism will never go away completely, but remaking the world into a place where no state can seek to help or even harbor terrorists in their midst is a worthy goal. A goal for which success will be hard to measure, and failure will be all too obvious. Each bomb that goes off isn't a failure, and each day without a bomb isn't a success, but another 4th of July was celebrated in the United States, and despite the threats, chatter and insinuations from the crazies, they weren't able to screw with people's plans (mother nature on the other hand, she's hardcore).