I have held rather tenaciously to the view that the war in Iraq was 1) well chosen; 2) noble; 3) well fought and 4) won.

That has elicited some wonderfully amusing and sometimes nasty criticism, primarily from the left. I happen to believe -- completely smugly and to the utter annoyance of my critics -- that they will eventually come around. I draw the historical parallel to the Reagan administration's diplomatic approach to the Soviet Union and its abandonment of the language of detente, which was detested by and critiqued aggressively by the left and which today is almost universally acknowledged by left and right as responsible for the collapse of the USSR . . .

Eventually, the left must come to embrace what we are doing and achieving in the Middle East. Defeating tyranny and genocide is the raison d'etre of liberalism, is it not?