The New Realpolitik

Mark Steyn makes an excellent point in his latest article:

That was what Bush accomplished so superbly in his speech: the idealistic position -- spreading liberty -- is now also the realist one: If you don't spread it, in the end your own liberty will be jeopardized. "It is the policy of the United States," said the president, "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." By the end of his second term? Well, not necessarily. But what matters is that the president has repudiated the failed "realism" that showers billions on a friendly dictator like Egypt's Mubarak and is then surprised when one of his subjects flies a passenger jet into the World Trade Center

The realpolitik that dominated American foreign policy from 1945 until 2001 was implemented for a specific reason: to fight Soviet-style communism and its expansion. It was, by and large, an effective policy, inasmuch as the Soviets were motivated to keep their client states in check, and so were we.

The situation has now changed.

What both the modern Democratic Party and their media lapdogs (or is that the other way around?) have failed to grasp is the nature of the new enemy. (Some of them, apparently, have failed to grasp the fact that there's an enemy at all, but they're the same idiots they've always been, and so are largely ignored except when comic relief is needed.) The new enemy is Islam, and it cannot be contained by the old system. It must be defeated by the ideals of freedom, democracy, and individual worth that our country is founded upon. Only by spreading them can we hope to survive.

George Bush understands this; so does Condi Rice. The liberal media... well, they're a bit slow. Must've been all that LSD.