I was out of town for the Easter weekend, so was not able to post anything since last Thursday. Here are my thoughts for the day.

One of my favorite columnists is Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. I do not always agree with him, but he always has something interesting to say. He brings a perspective to Middle East issues that you rarely hear elsewhere. He is a liberal in the classic sense. This kind of liberal believes in the good that America can do for the world. This kind of liberal believes in America and what it stands for and believes that we have a responsibility to project those values throughout the world for the betterment of mankind. There is no cynical hidden agenda for this type of liberal. This type of liberal is different from the more cynical leftist who sees a right-wing conspiracy behind every action by the US. The leftist would see the liberal as misguided and naive. After all, it was this kind of liberal who brought the US into Vietnam in order to bring democracy to southeast Asia and prevent the communists from taking over. Thomas Friedman supported the war in Iraq because it would bring democracy and western values to the middle east and act as a cultural, political and social counterweight to radical Islam, which is the shibboleth of the early 21st century, just as communism was in the 20th. Here is an excerpt from Thomas Friedman's column today:

Yes, this Iraq war was about Saddam. For George Bush and Tony Blair, though, I think it was about something larger, but unstated. They were implicitly saying: "This terrorism bubble has come to threaten open societies and all they value. So, we're going to use Iraq - because we can - to demonstrate to you that we'll come right into the heart of your world to burst this bubble. Take note."

We and the Arab-Muslim world must now draw the right conclusions. One hopes Americans will now stop overreacting to 9/11. Al Qaeda is not the Soviet Union. Saddam was not Stalin. And terrorism is not communism. America sliced right through Iraq. It did so because we are a free-market democracy that is capable of amassing huge amounts of technical power. And it did so because our soldiers so cherish what they have that they were ready to fight house to house from Basra to Baghdad. That was the real shock and awe for Iraqis - because the terrorism bubble said Nasdaq-obsessed Americans were so caught up with the frivolity of modern life, they had lost the will to fight. Wrong.

We are strong because of who we are. Iraq was weak because of what it was. So, yes, let's add a metal detector or two at the airports, but let's stop thinking we have to remake our whole society, constrict all civil liberties, ban all Arab students and throw out all our foreign policy doctrines that have served us so well - from deterrence to collective security to the usefulness of the U.N. - to meet this new terrorism threat. We do not, and we must not.