Afghanistan. Victory and Valor.

Christopher Hitchen of Vanity Fair Magazine spent some time in Afghanistan recently. Keep in mind that if there is a more anti-Bush magazine than Vanity Fair, I am not aware of it. His article this month is fascinating. He perhaps didn't realize how it confirms American policy in Afghanistan or it could be just actual fair journalism. Probably both.
He said that the thing that struck him in a overwhelming way was the change for women. He says:

"Three years ago, you could not look an Afghan woman or girl in the eye. Half the population was chatter or other property: Invisible, enveloped, and voiceless. The male members of their families could literally give them away as bargaining chips, or prizes. Arbitrary and lascivious punishments, ususally totted up in lashes but sometimes in lethal stones, were the enforcement of this slavery. You can still read, quite often, of young women who set themselves on fire to avoid forced marriage and other types of bondage."
He reminds us that this was the world of Bin Laden and the Taliban regarding women.

Fully 41% of those registered to vote at the time of the article were women. Now the women were showing their faces and hair, going to school, and finding their voice in society.

We now know that the threats of widespread bombing and violence on election day were empty threats, thank God. Not that isolated acts of violence won't continue, they will. As long as even a few of the mutants of Bin Laden live, they will spread the evil that consumes them. But even a writer of vanity Fair acknowdleges this common thought:
"If Osama bin Laden is still alive, he has a very faint and unconvincing way of demonstrating it."

Bottom line: Al Qaida and Taliban attacked us. We went into Afghanistan and kicked their ass. The people of Afghanistan have been pulled from the darkness of ignorance and shame into the sweet light of freedom.

A remarkable victory and a undebatable change in the history of the middle east for the better. Bush could have easily let that victory be it. With this historic vote in Afghanistan and no war in Iraq, Bush would now be facing a landslide victory, no doubt. Most politicians might have done exactly that. To win re-election if nothing else. But Bush saw and felt a clear threat from Saddam. He was not going to risk another attack and felt it was time to remove this madman from a region that had long been planting and sowing deep seeds of hatred for the United States. Decisions like this take courage. Some may call Bush a lot of things, but full of self interest is not one of them. What President wouldn't relish a victory over the Taliban and Bin Laden and sit back and enjoy the accolades?
Not this one.

Everyone agrees that all involved from the UN to European nations to the U.S. believed that Saddam had WMD. He had used them and we have the mass graves to prove it. Everyone agrees that Saddam was madman bent on power, killing, and control of the region. Everyone agrees that his sons were even worse and waiting in the wings for their turn at continuing the evil. We can never know "what might have been" if Saddam had not been taken down. We can't know what horror we prevented in the future or how many lives we saved.

The left will always insist that Saddam was not much of a threat. Evil? Sure. Hated the U.S. with every fiber of his being? Sure. Tortured and killed his own people? Sure. Tried invading other countries? Sure. Planned on developing his weapons program after attention died down? Sure. Embezzled millions from the food for oil program that made his people suffer? Sure. Payed off European countries in kickbacks dissolving any credibility they had on the Iraq war? Sure.

But still......Just not that much of a threat. Yeah. Right.

Bush made a courageous and unpopular decision, as most courageous decisions are. The only way we can thank him is by casting our vote for him on Nov. 2nd.

Our warriors have made us proud. They have sacrificed, but not in vain.

Freedom is something we in the U.S. take for granted. But little girls in Afghanistan hold it tightly now like a warm blanket. It feels good. It feels safe.