Originally Posted by Ooper

Here are 5 worth commendation... Although I didn't write these, I agree with them... but you asked... the following was written by Allen C. Guelzo, National Post - Published: Friday, November 21, 2008

1. The war in Iraq

There are two key facts to remember about the invasion of Iraq. First, al-Qaeda feeds on the carcasses of failed states (witness Afghanistan and Somalia). Second, the Hussein regime was, after the Gulf War and a decade of economic sanctions, sliding unavoidably into a political abyss. The only question was, who would get there first to fill the coming vacuum - al-Qaeda, the Iranian mullahs, or the United States. And unlike Somalia or Afghanistan, Iraq had real stakes to put into play in the form of the world's second-largest oil reserves. Imagine Osama bin Laden as an oil sheikh, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cornering the world oil market, and you'll see why the Iraq invasion was a geo-strategic victory for the West.


2. ‘Axis of Evil' speech

How novel, how refreshing, that the chief officer of a Western democracy was willing to use the word evil about evil people, instead of the conventional moral stammering which has afflicted the West over the last century. Here is a home truth Bush recognized and acted upon: The stamina required to confront evil will never materialize unless there is a willingness to use the word itself.


3. Faith-based initiatives

For once, an American president has recognized the vast social capital which is cached within American religious organizations, and tapped it. While this has enraged the separation-of-church-and-state dogmatists, the real source of that rage is the notion that state institutions (whose largesse produces serfdom) do a worse job of deploying that capital than non-state institutions (whose generosity, because it is voluntary, enhances freedom).


4. Blunting the metastasis of abortion

Like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, one act of killing requires more acts of killing to legitimize itself. This has been the real agenda behind the enigmatic enthusiasm for stem-cell research and the furious criticism of bans on late-term, or "partial-birth," abortion. It was an act of singular political courage for Bush to see this agenda for what it was, expose it publicly for what it is, and obstruct it for as long as he has.


5. Balancing the bench

The federal judiciary, as the least-well-defined creation of the American Constitution, has lent itself all-too-willingly to the agenda of the American Left. Seeing that the judicial game could be played by two, George W. Bush concentrated on nominating - and steering to confirmation - a hefty phalanx of judges pledged to the utterly novel strategy of letting the Constitution alone. Bush did not get as many of his appointees confirmed as Bill Clinton, who made 65 appointments to Bush's 61. But Bush's are younger and will be around longer, and represent majorities of the sitting judges on 10 out of the 13 federal circuit courts.


(Allen C. Guelzo is a professor at Gettysburg College, Pa., and author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.)