THE RIGHT THING AND THE WRONG THING

After 9/11 made it clear that hand-wringing and a few cruise missiles were not enough to stop the America-hating madmen of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups and nations, we had a President who did not make the mistakes of France and Britain during the 1930s. The nations supporting terrorism did not yet have the capability to unify Islam and challenge the survival of the West.

So President Bush did the right thing; even if some of the steps along the way were mistaken, it was vital that we act boldly and visibly.

His policies were immediately effective in the changed behavior of most terror-sponsoring states.

However, years of vocal and increasingly effective Democratic anti-Bush propaganda, designed to achieve no higher purpose than the political defeat of George W. Bush, have emboldened our enemies everywhere. Democratic Bush-haters can claim that Bush has lowered our prestige in the world, but the opposite is true. Where it counts -- among those nations that support terrorism -- Bush vastly raised our prestige, and the Democrats have shockingly lowered it. . . .

Only if the Democrats have their way and we go down to voluntary and unnecessary defeat in a war that we did not start -- only then will it become clear how wise and essential President Bush's policies were. The Democrats will try to blame the disaster on Bush, but the American people will know that things went hopelessly wrong only after the Democrats forced our premature surrender to Islamo-fascism in Iraq.

-- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 1/14/07