Fortune Favors the Bold

In a post on Little Green Footballs on a recent editiorial by Victor David Hanson (who was a Democrat before 9/11/2001 and has since had a radical change of political affiliation) titled "A Look Back," the author points out what we can already see happening because of the Global War on Terrorism and the liberal side of the political equation. Many grudging "Bush was right" statements, usually delivered with much less clarity of wording, but that's what they are having to say. Read the post on LGF here. A cogent comment regarding the proper application of the full toolbox of diplomatic tools was listed that caught my eye and it's a wonderful synopsis of what history, in the past few decades has shown to be the right and wrong way of handling aggression (credit to commenter "Malleus Dei"):

"Every time the United States the last quarter century had acted boldly — its removal of Noriega and aid for the Contras, instantaneous support for a reunified Germany, extension of NATO, preference for Yeltsin instead of Gorbachev, Gulf War I, bombing of Milosevic, support for Sharon's fence, withdrawal from Gaza and decapitation of the Hamas killer elite, taking out the Taliban and Saddam-good things have ensued. In contrast, on every occasion that we have temporized — abject withdrawal from Lebanon, appeasement of Arafat at Oslo, a decade of inaction in the Balkans, paralysis in Rwanda, sloth in the face of terrorist attacks, not going to Baghdad in 1991 — corpses pile up and the United States became either less secure or less respected or both." The Romans knew the truth two thousand years ago. The great Roman poet Virgil put into words: "Audentes fortuna juvat." FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD.