Learning from History

Robert Tracinski:

What we learned from September 11 was that we do not have the luxury of leaving America's enemies undefeated. If Iraq was America's most urgent piece of unfinished business, what we learned from September 11 is that we had better finish the job.

In Iraq, however, the prospect of toppling a dictatorial regime and replacing it with something better turned out to be a much larger and more complex task than in Afghanistan. This is an experiment from which we gained the most new information in the years following September 11.

Well, it's what we should have learned. I can't help thinking about how much more could have been accomplished if the media were behind the President, instead of allowing themselves to be manipulated by the terrorists. We need leaders who will stand for doing right, even when it's hard or scary. The press used to be leaders. Today, the Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column.