This weekend brought great news for freedom. As it was also great news for the President, it did not receive a lot of coverage.
The WSJ Ed page calls it Two Wins Against Terror (on the free site!)
The two wins are the free elections in Afghanistan and the comfortable re-election of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Howard is not only a staunch ally in the War on Terror (or "the nuisance," if you're Senator Kerry) but he is also a free-market, free trade, friend of liberty.
So, risk a little bit of optimism, kids.
Democracy is a force terrorists dread. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has warned his al Qaeda associates that democracy in Iraq would "suffocate" the terror campaign he is orchestrating from his base in Fallujah. Voters Saturday in two very different parts of the world proved his point. Australians enthusiastically re-elected John Howard, a staunch U.S. anti-terror ally, and the Afghans pulled off, against tremendous odds, the country's first national election for a president.[...]
It's also worth remembering that Afghanistan's transformation has been accompanied by predictions of doom all along the way. First, it was said that the U.S. could never topple the Taliban, especially if we got in bed with the Northern Alliance. Then we were going to end up bogged down for years like the Soviets and British. Next we didn't have enough troops, and Mr. Karzai was too weak and the warlords too strong. Saturday's election doesn't end the troubles there, but Afghanistan's progress so far is a major success for the Bush Doctrine of taking the battle to the terrorists and spreading freedom to prevent their return.