As the world's only superpower, America had a choice. America could shrug or America could help. Like those neighbors in Queens, we could turn away (it was far away, after all), or we could take up the moral responsibility and teach our children that in helping the Iraqi people we would make the dangerous world a little safer for them - and for us. So America made the only choice America could make. We can't rid the world of every evil man, but we could, and did, rid the world of one monster.
"Family values," it seems clear to me, requires that the nation set an example for the world just as parents set an example for their children. Saddam systematically crippled Iraqi women, depriving half the population of the most basic human right, the right to dignity. That's an abuse of a family value.
The latest conventional political wisdom of the chattering class is that John Kerry can retrieve his sagging poll numbers if he moves away from a focus on foreign policy and concentrates on domestic policy. But the two can no longer be separated. International terrorism is the number one domestic issue. We must keep our children safe from vile men (and women) who use terror to target innocents by targeting terrorists wherever they are. The survival of families is the ultimate family value.
No one can look at the photographs of those Russian children who died in Middle School No. 1 at the hands of terrorists - several of whom were Islamist Arabs trained by the same al-Qaida of Sept. 11 - without asking whether that could happen here. Our very souls are chilled by the instinctive answer that we know is "yes." The terror wars of the new century, unlike the conventional wars of the 20th, will be fought on many fronts. One of them is the home front.
"The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more," the president said in his acceptance speech last week in New York City. "Our nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom."
That's a value for all our families.