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An End to Evil by David Frum and Richard Perle
- Abstract
In the war on terror, we have reached a winter of discontent. Democratic candidates tell us the center cannot hold, that we are over-extended and globally unloved, that the Bush policies have failed. We hear that Iraq was the wrong target, that Saddam Hussein may have had no weapons of mass destruction, that reconstruction is going badly. Meanwhile, North Korea and Iran are growing threats. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians remains unresolved. Osama bin Laden is still out there making audiotapes.
From the Bush administration have come reports of progress, of course, but as we advance the terrain seems less certain, the strategy less clear. In a private memo, obtained by USA Today last fall, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted that “we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing.” In his State of the Union address, the President reaffirmed his commitment to the war but listed no specific new steps, and the word is that any bold new moves are basically on hold for the rest of this election year. Our enemies suffer no such constraints. So where are we going, and what should be the plan?
About the Author
Claudia Rosett, a journalist in residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is at work on a book about the United Nations in the age of terror. Her article, “The Oil-for-Food Scam: What Did Kofi Annan Know, and When Did He Know It?,” appeared in the May 2004 COMMENTARY. In 2005 she won both the Mightier Pen award and the Eric Breindel award for excellence in opinion journalism.
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