Conservative writer, Republican strategist and industry executive Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's recently announced national goals for the first term of his Presidency in an interview tomorrow, May 20, 2008, at 5:30pm EDT on Sirius Satellite's Indie Talk Station 110. Live audio of the interview will be available globally.

Given as part of a May 15, 2008 speech in Columbus, Ohio, McCain spelled out specific goals for the first term of his Presidency, including, in foreign affairs, substantial progress in the war against al-Qaeda and other terrorist elements in Afghanistan and Iraq and ending Sudan's bloody ethnic genocide in Darfur. At home, goals included expanding economic growth and access to quality health care, reforming America's complex and punitive tax system, eliminating Washington's wasteful earmark and other spending, significantly reducing American dependence on foreign petroleum, vastly improving the quality of American education and other important national objectives.

Johns will also address mounting speculation over selection of a Republican Vice Presidential running mate, which purportedly includes a short list of roughly 20 names. McCain has stated that he expects to announce his running mate selection before the Republican National Convention convenes on September 1, 2008 in Minneapolis.

Conservative writer, Republican strategist and industry executive Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss his support for John McCain's recently announced economic plan tomorrow morning, April 17, 2008, from 10am to 10:30am EDT on Ron Silver's radio show. The show is broadcast on Sirius Satellite's Indie Talk Channel 110 and can be heard globally.

Johns will discuss the nation's urgent need for pro-growth economic policies, including business, gasoline and personal tax relief, targeted assistance for holders of non-conventional mortgages, Medicare and Social Security reform, ending reckless Congressional earmark spending, expanding job retraining opportunities, and other policies that can help place the nation's economy back on a growth track.

In addition to hosting a daily morning radio show on Sirius Satellite's Indie Talk station, Ron Silver is an accomplished actor known for his television roles in West Wing, Law & Order, and Chicago Hope and his film roles in Ali, Reversal of Fortune, Blue Steel, Timecop, and others. A long-time Democrat, Silver left the party following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and has since been generally supportive of President George W. Bush's efforts in the global war on terror. Silver also authors a widely-read blog dedicated largely to public policy topics.

Michael Johns and IntellectualConservative.com co-editor and Phoenix prosecutor Rachel Alexander will appear on Sirius Satellite today, Friday April 4, 2008. They can be heard on Sirius's Indie Talk 110, live from Sirius's New York City studios, from 5pm to 6pm EDT. They will discuss the 2008 Presidential election and other topics.

By Michael Johns

It can be said that modern conservatism knows only two times. There was the time before him and there was the time after him, and those two times could not be more contrasting. In this stark contrast lies his larger-than-life legacy, and let there be no mistake: It is a legacy that will endure the ages.

As word of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s passing reached his many students, admirers and colleagues late last week, it seemed each had an account (some grand, some small) of how this intellectual giant memorably impacted and touched their lives, their vision, and their work. In the aggregate, they tell the story of a man whose immense collective qualities--genius, boldness, industriousness, persuasiveness, and (perhaps least appreciated) kindness and generosity--were without equal in modern American public life. Even in death, Buckley is bringing conservatives together more effectually than many conservative leaders are doing in life. It should surprise no one. To have had the good fortune to have brushed upon Buckley during this life was to leave impressed, inspired, and reinvigorated in the purpose-driven life that he lived admirably and which he cultivated in a whole generation of conservatives who, now in his absence, carry forward his torch.

It may be said too often of the recently deceased, but it must be said emphatically of Buckley: We will not likely see his type again.

So diverse and ultimately immense were Buckley's accomplishments that it becomes dangerously easy to shortchange the vastness of his ultimate legacy. During the 82 years that God granted him to us, he was described as the most prolific conservative writer of modern times. No doubt. From the early 1950s until a few weeks ago, Buckley's writings eloquently challenged liberalism's false promises at every step and defined the intellectual and political alternative that was and still is contemporary conservatism. His books (35 non-fiction, 12 in the Blackford Oakes novel series, and another eight of fiction), his National Review columns and commentary (beginning with the magazine's 1955 founding and continuing through early this year), and his syndicated column (published since 1962 in over 300 U.S. and global newspapers) represent nothing short of a library of modern conservative thought. In these writings lies not just Buckley's persuasive case for conservative policies and principles but one of the best depictions of conservatism's evolution from a nascent ideology to the most consequential intellectual and political force of modern times. What a literary treasure he has left us.

But Buckley's impact is not constrained to his role as the most prolific conservative author and writer of our times. His role in the ultimate ascent of conservatism as a national and even global political force is less broadly recognized but equally undeniable and important. The conservative revolution may have materialized nationally with Ronald Reagan's 1980 election, but that electoral victory was the result of over two decades of work in the trenches, pre-dating even Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful 1964 challenge against Lyndon Johnson. What existed before Buckley was an ineffectual group (one cannot even really call it a political movement) of self-described conservatives whose relevance was largely negligible. Before Buckley, modern conservatism had no refined policy agenda (and if one existed at all, it would likely have been equated with Robert Taft's dangerous isolationism at a moment when the global threat of communism was amassing). Conservatism then also had zero skill in communicating to, and connecting with, the hearts and minds of the American people. Add those two things up, and it's not surprising that conservatives, pre-Buckley, also failed in the electoral process.

It was Buckley who, in 1960, quickly looked at this "movement," and changed it forever. One of his first steps, the founding of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), formed the foundation that ultimately propelled Goldwater's candidacy. On September 11, 1960, conservatives gathered in Buckley's hometown of Sharon, Connecticut, where conservative author M. Stanton Evans, one of the first and greatest Buckley proteges, with input from Annette Kirk (wife of the late Russell Kirk), drafted the "Sharon Statement." It is not an overstatement that it may well be one of the most important documents on the American purpose and conservative vision since the Declaration of Independence itself.

"In this time of moral and political crises," the Sharon Document began, "it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths." It immediately and appropriately referenced the fact that it was only God's gift of free will that permits man's "rights to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force." It followed with an unhesitating and accurate reference to the fact that political freedom, without economic freedom, cannot long endure. It defined the Constitutionally protected freedoms and national security interests that were incumbent on the American government to protect (including, if necessary, by military force). Consistent with this, it boldly called for victory over, not coexistence with, global communism, stating "that the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties" and "that the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace." Invigorated at Sharon, conservatives left that conference with a clear cut vision of who and what they were and who and what they opposed. Modern conservatism was born.

As the years progressed, it was this Sharon-inspired movement that challenged the emerging opposition to the U.S. effort to help defend South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, urging intervention against North Vietnam's aggression not just in the defense of South Vietnam but also in resisting North Vietnam's destabilization efforts in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. While accepting many of the objectives of Johnson's "Great Society," the movement simultaneously and staunchly denounced the extraordinary expansion of federal government that Johnson used to achieve them. In 1964, it was this movement that urged and then supported Goldwater's national candidacy. While unsuccessful electorally, it did succeed in giving birth to Reagan's monumental speech, "A Time for Choosing," which was hugely and transparently influenced by the Sharon Statement's position on the importance of defending economic liberty. In this nationally-televised endorsement of Goldwater, Reagan said: "The founding fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

Reagan's persuasive case for Goldwater was made too late to salvage the Arizona Senator's Presidential candidacy, but it was this speech that gave birth to Reagan as a national political force. It was again Buckley and his allies that, following "A Time for Choosing," led conservatism forward, championing Reagan as Goldwater's conservative heir, first in his daring but unsuccessful 1976 challenge of Gerald Ford and then in his ultimately revolutionary 1980 victory. At each step, Buckley led these political advancements while carefully ensuring conservatism was kept on course and did not sacrifice its enduring principles in the name of political expediency. Buckley's was always a long-term plan and a long-term vision, which makes it unsurprising that his will be a long-term legacy.

Still, to describe Buckley as the most prolific and politically consequential conservative of our time does not capture the totality of his contributions to American democracy. The reason is this: Even if one rejects every conservative idea that Buckley embraced and carefully and eloquently articulated in his six decades of public life--the importance of connectivity between God and democratic peoples, the correlation between free markets and economic growth, and the case for resisting and defeating (not merely containing) totalitarian threats--it was Buckley who recreated intellectual and political choice in America. As the conservative columnist Mona Charen observed in The Washington Post last week, before Buckley, the liberal intellectual Lionel Trilling was able to state without challenge that conservatism did not really have any ideas. It had, Trilling wrote in The Liberal Imagination, merely "irritable mental gestures." When he died in 1975, Trilling probably still viewed conservatism in a similarly inconsequential light, but that's only because he never lived to see the fruition of the revolution that Buckley brought us. With steady progress, those gestures that Trilling observed in 1949 turned to concepts, those concepts turned to ideas, those ideas turned to policies, and those policies, embraced fearlessly by a new generation of conservatives impacted at every turn by Buckley, ultimately transformed a political and ideological movement, then a nation, and finally the world.

But it's equally important to remember that Buckley gave us conservatism as a choice, not as a guaranteed destination. That work falls to this and subsequent generations, and it is a job that, truth be told, will never be complete. Remembering one of his earliest Buckley-inspired influences, the conservative leader Bill Kristol recalled in The New York Times a few days ago that he proudly wore a lapel pin at his New York City high school in 1970. "Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton,” it said, summarizing the philosophy of the early National Review contributor Eric Voegelin. "THEM," of course, referred to those who sought (and still seek), outside of God, a governmentally-created and enforced, ideologically-inspired utopian social order here on Earth.

Tragically, while we fought THEM (Marx, Lenin and his successors, and Hitler) necessarily and successfully in World War II and then again (under Buckley's urging and inspiration) in the Cold War, it may be easy to conclude that it is a victory fully won. I believe Buckley would urge restraint in such a conviction, especially when, in our own nation, Americans still pack indoor stadiums, some apparently fainting in awe, at the false promises of liberalism's allure, now conveyed in a junior Senator's promises to confiscate the income of one group of Americans and send it through the federal Treasury to others, while simultaneously leading America's retreat in the global war on terror and "daring" to engage without condition those remaining totalitarians in Pyongyang, Tehran, Havana and elsewhere who will use America's diplomatic engagement with them to validate their suppression of human liberties at home and to send a global signal that the best way to earn America's attention is to hate it. Sadly, even after Buckley, there exist some Americans who actually view such a course of false promises as a "brave" one. Message: The Eschaton is still being immanetized.

All of these grand battles, some under way right now and some yet to be fought, will now be waged by a seasoned generation of American conservative warriors educated and trained on Buckley's watch and in his tradition. This conservative generation is a centerpiece of Buckley's ultimate enduring legacy. It is a legacy, however, that is not restricted to what he accomplished in this world, but also in how he handled himself while doing it. As Charen accurately observed last week: "It was always Bill who rushed to get a chair for the person left standing. It was always Bill who reached to fill your glass. It was always Bill who volunteered to give you a lift wherever you were going, insisting it was on his way."

As he bravely and victoriously faced down the most dangerous ideological threats and temptations of his time, William F. Buckley, Jr., it should be remembered, always did it with a smile. In that smile was an eternal optimism that he held in the grand potential of the unleashed human spirit. As we honor his giant and enduring legacy, it is an optimism that must carry us forward. We now walk this road in Buckley's physical absence. But he has paved it well with the promises of the purpose-driven life amidst freedom and liberty, and a broadly-accepted and educated wisdom that permits us--and calls us--to defend both.

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, said today that the 2008 Presidential election is beginning to line up as one of the most clear-cut ideological electoral choices of modern times, and that the proven and enduring success of conservative policies can again prevail this November, ushering in a new era of policy-driven momentum for 21st century conservatism.

Michael will discuss the 2008 Presidential primary and general elections, the current state of the global war against Islamic terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere, the challenges confronting American health care and solutions to them, and why expanded American economic growth through market-driven policies, not massive federal income redistribution schemes, is the key to strengthening America at home and abroad. He says that the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election will prove a defining moment for the nation.

A New Jersey-based health care executive, Michael has over 20 years of global public policy and national political experience, having served as a White House speechwriter to former President George H. W. Bush, a senior aide to a United States Senator and Governor, and a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Michael has appeared on PBS, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, and other networks and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, National Review, Policy Review, and other publications. He currently authors one of the most widely-read conservative public policy blogs on the World Wide Web, available at:

http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/

A supporter of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, Michael's analysis can be heard globally from the New York City studios of Sirius Satellite this Tuesday February 26, from 5pm to 6pm EST (10pm to 11pm GMT), on Sirius's INDIE Talk Channel 110.

Michael Johns' wide-ranging, hour long interview with the popular radio program, The Bottom Line with Ryan Prucker, is now available online.  The audio, which can be heard or downloaded globally, is available at Episode 8 on the right column, midway down, of Bottom Line's web site at:

http://www.bottomlineryan.com/index-3.html

In the interview, Michael addresses the complexities of national and global Presidential communication, why President George W. Bush's liberation of Iraq will ultimately prove one of the great accomplishments of the century (despite its current unpopularity), and why several broken components of the U.S. health care system demand creative solutions, especially ensuring enhanced quality, patient-centered care and an expeditious solution to the 40 million Americans, or 13 percent of the country, who live without any health insurance.

Michael also offers great praise for former President Ronald Reagan and his administration, stating that Reagan's domestic policies salvaged a dangerous trend toward governmental micromanagement of the U.S. economy and that Reagan's foreign and defense policies were the single most important factor in the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the 46-year long Cold War. 

The Bottom Line with Ryan Prucker is hosted by widely-respected corporate and non-profit marketing consultant Ryan Prucker, President of New York-based Imagelight Advertising & Production, LLC and Executive Producer of the television series Exploring History's Treasures and Three Course Delight.

By Michael Johns

Disturbingly, there is an emerging consensus among the Democrat-led United States Congressional leadership that the war in Iraq is "lost." The most recent example that this thesis has worked its way into official party talking points was offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, who pointedly stated last month that "...this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything...."

Setting the obvious contrarian politics aside, could there be a more defeatist, demoralizing and undermining statement at this time?

With approximately 3,000 lives--some of America's finest men and women--now having been sacrificed for the purpose of this mission in Iraq and another quarter million currently deployed there in harm's way, calling the Iraq War "lost" is about the greatest disservice a public official can offer both those fighting today and the legacy of the 3,000 fallen. Does this Congress really need to be reminded: Their mission is a hugely laudable one, not a lost cause.

Make no mistake: the Iraq War has become the epicenter in the global war against terrorism, and the outcome in Iraq will ultimately be a key factor in determining whether September 11, 2001 was the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda, or whether, conversely, it was just the beginning of an era of global terror that grows in both scope and duration.

This fact may be lost on the Democratic leadership now conceding defeat and seeking the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but it is not lost on al-Qaeda itself. Last weekend, on May 5th, Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's second in command, essentially echoed Reid's sentiment, observing that the Democrat-led legislative effort to establish a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq “reflects American failure and frustration.”

To those Americans who have not yet grasped the extent of al-Qaeda's stake in the outcome of the Iraq War, and why the Iraq War is a large part of the war on terror, ask yourself why Zawahiri is commenting on Congressional acts in Iraq, not in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The point should be self-evident: al-Qaeda wishes nothing more than to see Iraq left in a state of chaos, in which they can maintain a presence following an American withdrawal that would surely demonstrate that it is al-Qaeda, not the U.S. or democratic political systems, that own the future of the Persian Gulf region. It's this simple: a win in Iraq is a significant defeat for al-Qaeda, establishing a secure, peaceful and democratic nation in the heart of the Persian Gulf. A defeat in Iraq is a significant win for them, al-Qaeda, likely creating another nation in chaos and ripe, as the Taliban regime once was in Afghanistan, for large levels of al-Qaeda presence and training.

Clearly, one hopes that is not a message Congressional Democrats want to be sending al-Qaeda and America's enemies in the region at this juncture, and I think it would be unfair to assign any member of Congress such malicious motives. But it's already becoming very clear that driving the Republicans from the White House will first mean ensuring no 2008 Republican candidate can run on the coattails of a Bush-led victory in that nation. Putting politics ahead of national security, this nation's Democratic leadership knows all too well what the prolonged nature of the Iraq War has done to President Bush's national popularity. It has set the table for the Democrats to reclaim the Presidency in a mere 20 months.

If it is not politics that is driving the Democratic inclination to label the Iraq War "lost," then Senator Reid's course of action should be clear: He owes this nation, its deployed troops and their families an apology because this conflict has been anything but "lost."

Reflect for a moment on the accomplishments of U.S. forces so far in the Iraq War: the U.S. engaged Saddam Hussein diplomatically, only to find him utterly uncompromising to reasonable expectations of the U.S. and the world community. Given ample time to accommodate those expectations, the U.S. reluctantly was drawn into conflict, driving Saddam (who had governed Iraq since 1979) from power in a mere three weeks. Eight months later, in December 2003, U.S. forces captured the former Iraqi dictator--the "most wanted Iraqi"--in an underground mud shack on a ad-Dawr-based sheep farm.

Then, as opposed to ending Saddam's life there, the former dictator was properly tried under Iraq's established legal system. While he was technically charged with just one, fairly clearly established crime--the murder of 148 Iraqi Shiites and the illegal torture and incarceration of 399 others--the charges really reflected just a sampling of Saddam's brutal, 28-year reign. He was properly convicted and sentenced.

In Iraq, while critics of the war alleged that the war was really driven by U.S. aspirations for Iraqi oil, the U.S. sought quickly to transfer governing authority to the Iraqi people and did that in 2004. Since then, a constitution has been written and elections have been held, suggesting the promise of an emerging Iraqi democracy.

Critics respond that these victories aside, insurgents are winning the war. Wrong again. Today, most of Iraq, thanks to U.S. and allied intervention, is secure from terrorist attacks, and some of the most historically active insurgent areas--Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf and others--have become more secure.

These are not the accomplishments of a war that can be easily labeled "lost," and this President deserves credit for continuing to see through the ultimate and achievable objective of establishing a peaceful, stable and democratic Iraq. Can any objective onlooker really believe such a mammoth mission would be accomplished without its trials and tribulations? The entire concept of democracy functioning in the Persian Gulf was once an inconceivable concept; this President, these capable American men and women of our armed forces, combined with many brave Iraqis, are close to making it a reality. A "lost" war?

But, in fairness, the criticism is not exclusively a partisan one. This nation does run the risk of forgetting that warm, sunny morning of September 11, 2001, at least in part because some components of our modern culture seem to want us to forget. How telling, for instance, that American television networks, seemingly all of them, have adopted policies refusing to air the attacks on the World Trade Center because it was unsettling to some Americans. Message to networks: We should be unsettled. We need to be unsettled.

Nor is the criticism exclusively aimed at Democrats and our television media, who seem to be running from the call to action. President George W. Bush has handled this war on terror with extraordinary resolve, and one can only imagine the sense of responsibility that this President must carry as a decent man attempting to bring about a successful conclusion to this war. But even in this administration, the dead seriousness of al-Qaeda seems periodically lost. Take, for instance, the comment of a "senior administration figure" earlier this week, who reportedly found it "stunning" that Zawahiri was following the U.S. Congress so closely to be able to comment on the Democrat-led timetable legislation. Stunning?

There's nothing at all stunning about this observation by Zawahiri. In fact, if one looks at America's war on terror with some historical perspective, even 30 years worth, the one common denominator in America's engagement in foreign conflicts is that our enemies have closely monitored our metal and tested our political will. In this freest of nations, it's well known that American policy is driven by political temperament. That temperament has sometimes led us to war. That temperament has sometimes ended war. But the temperament of Americans does still guide the vast majority of this nation's foreign policies, and especially those that involve the loss of American life.

It shouldn't be surprising that this fact is not lost on our enemies. Anyone with any political sophistication--and one has to count the Senate Majority Leader among this group--understands that when you undermine American political will by advancing the thesis that what we have, in exchange for the loss of these 3,000 American heroes, is a war we are "losing", you have taken the first step to making that "loss" a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This recognition did not start with al-Qaeda. It was, for instance, well recognized by North Vietnam, whose leadership saw the U.S. anti-war movement of the early 1970s as a key component to eradicating American political will to sustain our important and warranted engagement in defending our important Asian ally, South Vietnam, in the midst of the Cold War. It also was recognized by the Kremlin, who saw U.S. and European-based "peace" movements as the quickest way to undermine former President Ronald Reagan's plan to appropriately counter Soviet global aggression through both a strengthening of American defenses and support for resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported regimes.

In contemporary America, memories can be short, even among those who have lived this history. Take this example: Speaking to a former White House-level Clinton administration official about a year ago--someone I would call a friend, despite our differing partisan alignments--this former Clinton official told me with a straight face that the world was becoming more complex and was not as simple as it was during the Cold War when, this Clinton official told me, "everything was so black and white."

That's interesting, I replied, because every time, during the Cold War, that conservatives like myself made the argument that we needed to be vigorous in opposing Soviet aggression, that the Soviet Union was in fact an "evil empire" and that "winning" the Cold War was both an achievable and laudable geopolitical goal, we were lectured by American liberals that the world was not so black and white, that neither the Soviet Union nor the U.S. could depict themselves as forces for good in the world, and--in their most extreme responses--that we were risking nuclear conflict, maybe even the very end of the world, in our insistence to engage, counter and defeat Soviet aggression abroad.

In fact, to the best of my memory, I cannot recall any liberals or Democrats who described the Cold War era as "black and white" in the heat of those battles. Every Congressional vote over former President Reagan's initiatives--the deployment of space-based defense to guard the nation from nuclear attack (known as the Strategic Defense Initiative), the effort to aid anti-communist resistance movements in Angola, Nicaragua and other nations (known as the Reagan Doctrine), and the initiative to strengthen NATO's defense capabilities (which Reagan correctly labeled "peace through strength")--were opposed every step of the way by some of the same people who now label that time a simple, "black and white" era where, they now contend, we "all" wanted to prevail. But it can never be forgotten that it was resiliency in the face of liberal opposition to Reagan's initiatives that won the Cold War. With due respect to American liberals, whose patriotism I do not question, the Cold War was won over their dead bodies.

In the midst of this 2007 political battle--with American liberals again trying to lead America's retreat, and this principled President appropriately and bravely standing his ground--can anyone doubt that, ten years from now, the war on terror will similarly be viewed as a "black and white" struggle between good and evil? Surely, it will be. But any liberal who intends to take that position cannot now be advocating a cut and run policy in Iraq.

There also is a lesson in this Cold War history that applies to Iraq today, where again--this time as it relates to their historical views on Saddam--American liberals seem to possess a selective memory. During my stint as a White House aide to former President George H. W. Bush, I can well remember periodically leaving the Washington, D.C. area on various weekends, sometimes returning to the hometown of my youth in Pennsylvania. I would arrive proud of the efforts at the time--and most especially the extraordinary, successful effort by former President George H. W. Bush to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

The successful liberation of Kuwait was widely welcomed by the American people, and former President Bush's approval ratings skyrocketed into the low 90s; no President since has come close to enjoying such widespread support from the American people. But in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, there was a different tone than that which existed inside the Bush White House. Beneath the popularity ratings and support for Kuwait's liberation, there was a lingering disappointment by many Americans--conservatives, moderates and liberals--that Bush, after driving Saddam's forces from Kuwait, did not push on to Baghdad and remove Saddam from power completely.

For those of us up close at the time, it was an absurd idea. Saddam was a brutal dictator in a world filled with brutal dictators. Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm were hugely successful because they defined a clear objective and then pursued it relentlessly, strategically and precisely. What sort of chaos would follow Saddam, in a nation so characterized by bitter conflict between Saddam's Baath party, the opposition Shia (which opposed Saddam's decision not to implement traditional Islamic law, known as the Sharia), the Kurdish opposition, and other factions?

To the great credit of former President Bush, Operation Desert Shield and then Operation Desert Storm were both clearly defined missions whose every initiative was consistent with these clearly-defined objectives, starting with Marlin Fitzwater's brilliant and inspirational February 17, 1991 comment that "the liberation of Kuwait has begun" (a statement of raw genius, both reflecting absolute confidence in the outcome of a battle not yet fought, combined with a rigid definition of what we sought to do), and continuing through the air war and the culmination of the ground war, which ended on February 27, 1991 with Kuwait's absolute liberation.

Contrary to some conventional wisdom at the time, there was nothing cowardly about former President Bush's decision not to drive Saddam from power in 1991. Nor did his decision not to do so in any way condone Saddam's obvious disregard for human rights, which ultimately and properly earned him entry into President George W. Bush's "axis of evil."

Rather, Operation Desert Storm was guided by a number of historical lessons, perhaps most prominent being that regime change can be a dangerous business and the U.S. can never seek to initiate, or even encourage, such change without some clear recognition of what follows a government's collapse. This astute geopolitical recognition justified former President Bush's February 1991 decision not to liberate Iraq from Saddam's autocratic reign, even though such an effort would have enjoyed initial support.

Over ten years later and following the September 11, 2001 attacks, regime change became an imperative in Afghanistan and then, ultimately, in Iraq. They question this war now, but it was not in question in 2002, with liberal Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and many other current critics of the war voting to authorize the use of force against Saddam.

To be sure, as some of these leading Democrats now conveniently begin to express their opposition to the Iraq War, they will contend, as most of them have already, that they authorized the use of force only because the Bush administration misled them as it related to Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

But this criticism too is unfair, since the intelligence that led the Bush administration to that conclusion had been widely accepted not just by President Bush, but by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, too. In fact, in justifying former President Clinton's December 1998 air attacks on Baghdad, Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor at the time, remarked that "(Saddam) will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Then Vice President Gore also recognized the fact that Saddam was harboring WMDs, noting: "We know that (Saddam) has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

What absolute audacity for Democrats to now forget these remarks and instead allege that this administration misled them into supporting a war they otherwise would have opposed. American intelligence under both Clinton and Bush indicated that WMDs were in Saddam's possession. It's quite clear that Saddam did historically use WMDs in his war against the Kurds and in the Iraqi-Iranian War. And, shocking as it may be to today's opponents of the Iraq War, it is not entirely inconceivable that Saddam was, in fact, possessing WMDs, just as both the Clinton and Bush administrations believed, when the use of force was authorized. It's certainly an extremely reasonable conclusion that Saddam's political maneuvering around United Nations-ordered inspections, which ultimately invited this war, were not designed to hide nothing.

The issue of WMDs is now ancient history. Whether they did or did not exist, it is now very clear that the Iraq War has become a central front in the war on terrorism. This global war has many fronts, and Iraq is one of them, which is why a dangerous man like Zawahiri is paying such close attention. For Al-Qaeda, much is at stake in Iraq's outcome.

Things will not likely get easier as the November 4, 2008 Presidential election, now 18 months away, nears. Iraq will take on a greater and greater domestic political dimension. So be it.

President Bush's legacy, should he succeed in stabilizing a democratic and peaceful Iraq, will be substantially better appreciated years from now than it is today in the heat of this battle. And should this administration remain engaged and succeed in prevailing in Iraq, the Republican candidate in 2008 will be within bounds in asking an important "what if" question: Where would we be now in this global war on terror if we had accepted Senator Reid and the Democratic party's April 2007 declaration that the Iraq War was "lost?"

Calling this war "lost" may now be hugely politically expedient for some, coming as it does at the height of uncertainty in this critical conflict.

But at such a critical moment, Americans should be comforted by this President, reminded that we have been here before. We well know these dark and freightening paths of uncertainty because we have walked them before, not just cursing their darkness but pointing the way to light. Valley Forge, 1777. Normandy, 1944. The Cuban missile crisis, 1962. The Pershing II deployment, 1981. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," 1987. "The liberation of Kuwait has begun," 1991.

Mr. Reid: The common denominators of over 200 years of American greatness may be alien to you, but they are not rooted in your defeatism.

Yes, we know these paths too well. Facing down terror in Iraq, 2007, in a global conflict that safely may be labeled "World War III," our next step could not be more self-evident: America must prevail.

Michael Johns, a health care executive, served previously as a White House speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush and a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.  He can be reached at: michaeldjohns@gmail.com.

By Michael Johns

For all its greatness, long-range thinking is not one of the many attributes one would assign to our nation. Our public companies often run on quarter to quarter corporate plans; our government's focus, frankly, is on the next election. In the United States House of Representatives, that's every two years. That means the campaign never stops, which also means the long-range thinking never starts.

Examples are plentiful: America's health care policy? Not a policy you'd describe as a long-term one, given its minimal focus on disease prevention, no immediate remedy to the mounting burden placed on state governments by long-term care admissions and no apparent solution for the coming demographic tidal wave in federal and state health costs. America's entitlement programs? The only thing certain about them is that they cannot go on as they are currently. Each Congressional Budget Office study confirms the obvious absurdity of our current course, which cannot be sustained without revolutionary changes. But it's not a comfortable political topic, so the absurdity endures.

National security and foreign policy? There are some brilliant long-range thinkers in the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and America's think tanks. But these people rarely are making policy. Here too America's policy is defined by a reactive, not proactive, approach to the many global threats to our national interests. Difficult as it may be to imagine today, the Iraq War will one day end. What next of America's role in this world? Perhaps understandably, Iraq seems to preclude such thinking right now, largely precluding the long-range strategic thinking that is required by our government and its policy makers.

And then there's America's energy policy, and it's generous to use the word "policy" in describing it. The transition of our nation from a manufacturing to a service economy may be nearly complete, but it's certainly not reflecting in our continued demand for oil, which is greater than ever.

By necessity (and to its credit), the administration of George W. Bush is now looking at some long-term alternatives to oil dependence, which President Bush rightly labeled an "addiction" in his State of the Union address this past January 31. Since then, it's a credit to this administration that the phrase "alternative energy", used historically to describe ethanol and other non-oil energy resources, is losing its relevance as these energy sources become less of an "alternative" and more a part of our deliberations over America's long-term energy needs. From all of this, a long-term energy policy may yet arise.

Yet, despite the obvious long-term need to adopt these "alternative" approaches to our nation's energy needs, it's troubling that Washington feels the necessity to trump market forces by making their production a federal mandate. If ethanol is all that its advocates represent, such a mandate would prove unnecessary because market resources would naturally flow to its development. This is especially true today, in an economy with abundant liquidity and unprecedented levels of available private capital.

What's troubling amidst all the hype around ethanol, however, is that these market forces have historically viewed ethanol with some degree of trepidation. That may someday change completely; in fact, it appears to be changing at least partly now. But it would be more appropriate to let those market forces flow to our next energy resources, as opposed to mandating one of them--ethanol, as Congress is doing. Federal corn lobbyists: 1, America's energy interests: 0.

The uncomfortable and too seldom discussed reality is that it is oil and natural gas that still drive this economy--and no alternative has yet emerged to supplant it. That's a fact today, and it will likely be a fact for at least several years to come. And oil is not, for two primary reasons, coming cheap.

First, the cost of oil is influenced by some degree of geopolitical risk still factored into its pricing. On Friday, for example, Saudi Arabia arrested 172 suspected al-Qaeda and other militants. At first word of this development, oil futures soared, as the market confronted the uncertainty of the incident. By this morning, as it appeared that Saudi forces had in fact foiled a fairly large Saudi-based terrorist cell, which should prove helpful to regional stability, future prices dropped, ultimately falling lower than they were before their original escalation on Friday on the theory that Saudi Arabia may finally be getting serious about eradicating the al-Qaeda threat. Such price volatility proves only that this is a jittery market looking over it's shoulder, well aware that dangerous geopolitical threats linger.

Second, the escalated price of oil is equally attributable to classic supply and demand forces, with supply negatively impacted by the fact the U.S., even in the midst of enhanced geopolitical uncertainties, has failed to drill sufficiently for oil on its own soil. An estimated 10 billion barrels remain undrilled on a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And off of our own coastal waters, European and other nations drill for oil where our own Congress has prohibited such drilling by American oil companies.

Widely unknown to most Americans, Congress also has mandated the production of roughly 30 different types of gasoline to be used in different parts of the nation, which only further increases the cost of its production. Eric Bolling, a strategic advisor to the New York Mercantile Exchange but better known as "The Admiral" on CNBC's excellent daily 8pm ET show Fast Money, predicts that gasoline is headed to $4 a gallon by July. That's the quantifiable cost of a war on terrorism that is not yet won and a Congress that seems clueless as to the extent of this nation's lingering energy crisis. Forget a long-term plan, this Congress doesn't have a short-term one.

Our long-term energy policy, when it does emerge, will not likely be rooted in oil, as President Bush has astutely acknowledged. But the short-term bridge to this long-term policy is very much rooted in oil, and it's a short-term bridge that requires the use of our own oil resources that can be easily extracted now. Such a step would ease the supply cycle that is burdening this nation with unnecessarily escalated oil and gasoline prices and enhancing our dependency on unreliable Persian Gulf, Nigerian and other oil resources.

Ditto the case with nuclear power, which, since Three Mile Island, modern technology has made an impressively efficient and environmentally-friendly mechanism for the delivery of energy. Even in the environmentally conscious European Union nations, this is a fact long ago recognized. But it's been 30 years since bureaucrats at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have authorized the construction of a nuclear power facility in this nation. The first one since then is now under development in New Mexico, but it's been a long time coming.

A final point: It surely is not a pleasant thought for most Americans, especially given the prolonged nature and excessive loss of life in the Iraq conflict, but the likelihood of a potential conflict with Iran is not insignificant. High school geography taught us that the Strait of Hormuz, which divides Iran and the United Arab Emirates, is roughly 21 miles wide and twenty percent of the world's oil flows through it. In the not so improbable case that Iran ultimately attempts to close this straight (as it has periodically threatened to do), either in provocation, in retaliation, or as part of a larger geopolitical conflict, it will be important that our currently untapped U.S.-based oil reserves are available.

With light sweet crude futures for June currently priced at roughly $65 a barrel, an ambitious short and long-term energy policy that enhances supply becomes important if, for no other reason, than the fact that, at $100 a barrel, the impact on this economy and the American people would be hugely painful. And in such a scenario, which could yet emerge this year or next, ethanol will not be this nation's salvation.

Michael Johns, a health care executive, served previously as a White House speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush and a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.  He can be reached at: michaeldjohns@gmail.com.

By Michael Johns

I wouldn't exactly call Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of my beloved Philadelphia Eagles, a good friend, or even a friend at all really. But we share enough in common: the same birthday (September 8th) and a passionate love for the Eagles, which in my case goes back to the age of six or seven, with fond memories of Ron Jaworski and Bill Bergey. Mr. Lurie's history is actually not as deeply rooted in the green and white: he comes from Boston, then headed to Hollywood to run some movie production company, neither of which you would find too commonly among the old 700-level Veterans Stadium fans who have deep emotional investments in this team. But suffice it to say that he's now the CEO of the company I have long admired the most--and, on that basis alone, Mr. Lurie has earned a place in my world.

But there's at least a little more to my history with Mr. Lurie and maybe, today being NFL Draft day, some relevant lesson that can be drawn from it as it relates to today's shocking first round selection by the Eagles. In that selection, the Eagles opted to trade down with the Dallas Cowboys in the first round and then use their first overall selection to draft University of Houston quarterback Kevin Kolb. Kevin Kolb? Yes, Kevin Kolb.

Back in the late 1990s, as a senior associate in one of Philadelphia's politically-wired center city consulting firms, I also counted the Eagles among one the Philadelphia-based clients that I represented. While the vast majority of my time was spent in our health care practice focused on assisting hospitals, nursing homes and the like, from time to time some of my colleagues at the firm--looking for some lobbying or strategic input but more likely just knowing of my passionate, lifelong love for the Birds--would look for my assistance in one way or another on the Eagles account. The essence of the mission was simple enough: to obtain state funding from Harrisburg for a new football-only stadium to replace Veterans Stadium, the historic South Philly stadium and former home to the Eagles and Phillies. It's a stadium of such fond multi-decade memories (to put it in historical perspective, I once saw Lou Brock steal a base there) that I sort of regret never purchasing one of its stadium seats, which I think they ended up marketing and selling for about $200 a piece before the stadium was ultimately subjected to a somewhat saddening 15-second, "shock and awe" city-orchestrated implosion. And then it was gone. Given that, I always thought a few Veterans Stadium seats would work well in my living room and would reveal all one needs to know about my interior design preferences.

The decimation was understandable. By the late 1990s the Vet's "field" was pretty much green concrete, not keeping up with some of the more plush NFL stadiums arising around the nation and, while many of us hated to see it go, the case for its replacement became glaringly apparent once quality prospective Eagles and Phillies players expressed reluctance about playing in Philly because of the field's