Long Range: Bush Has History on his Side

Natan Scharansky is a man who paid dearly for his belief in democracy and ultimately succeeded. He spent nine years incarcerated, and like John McCain, came out a better man for the experience.

Today, we are in the midst of a great struggle between the forces of terror and the forces of freedom. The greatest weapon that the free world possesses in this struggle is the awesome power of its ideas.

The Bush Doctrine, based on a recognition of the dangers posed by non-democratic regimes and on committing the United States to support the advance of democracy, offers hope to many dissident voices struggling to bring democracy to their own countries. The democratic earthquake it has helped unleash, even with all the dangers its tremors entail, offers the promise of a more peaceful world.

Yet with each passing day, new voices are added to the chorus of that doctrine's opponents, and the circle of its supporters grows ever smaller.
Critics rail against every step on the new and difficult road on which the United States has embarked. Yet in pointing out the many pitfalls which have not been avoided and those which still can be, those critics would be wise to remember that the alternative road leads to the continued oppression of hundreds of millions of people and the continued festering of the pathologies that led to 9/11.

Now that President Bush is increasingly alone in pushing for freedom, I can only hope that his dissident spirit will continue to persevere. For should that spirit break, evil will indeed triumph, and the consequences for our world would be disastrous.

We should remember that the totalitarian right and the totalitarian left have both been defeated in the last century. Bush is continuing to fight the good fight, now against religious extremists abroad and defeatist degenerates at home. Our future must neither be an Islamic Ummah nor a feminized effete France.

Bush is the happy medium.

And that makes the enemies of American democracy very unhappy.