Bush Shows Israel the Way Forward

These words from President Bush's speech last night should be said by an Israeli Prime Minister:

In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat. By allowing radical Islam to work its will -- by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself -- we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals, or even in our own courage. But our enemies and our friends can be certain: The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil.

Of course there is one problem with the analogy--America, which "cannot retreat within its own borders" is 464 times as big as Israel and has oceans separating it from the terror source.

Israel's moral justification for defending its small amount of land from terror is greater than America's. The only difference is power. Because of its historic embrace of statist economics, Israel finds itself beholden to the interests of other nations, the way that dependent children need to listen to their parents. That power can be enormously expanded through serious adoption of free market economics.