Back To The Future In The Middle East?

vy Victor Davis Hanson - July 26th, 2007 - Townhall.com

After four years of effort in Iraq, Americans may well tire of th[e] cost and bring Gen. Petraeus and the troops home. We can then go back to the shorter-term remedies of the past. Well and good.

But at least remember what that past policy was: Democratic appeasement of terrorists, interrupted by cynical Republican business with terrorist-sponsoring regimes.

Then came September 11, and we determined to get tougher than the Democrats by taking out the savage Taliban and Saddam Hussein - and more principled than the Republicans by staying on after our victories to foster something better.

The jihadists are now fighting a desperate war against the new stick of American military power and carrot of American-inspired political reform. They want us, in defeat, to go back to turning a blind eye to both terrorism and corrupt dictatorships.

That's the only way they got power in the first place and now desperately count on keeping it.

As we look to the future we need to start worrying about the next crisis in America. That crisis is coming when nuclear bombs start going off in America. There is less and less chance that this holocaust will be avoided. It is therefore incumbent on everyone in America to start asking, what will we do when it happens?