Another Voice on What's at Stake in the War on Terror

Natan Sharansky is one of those figures who by the power of his character and experience towers over other members of his generation. A leading nuclear scientist in the Soviet Union, he became a vocal and articulate dissident who was finally imprisoned for nine years in the Gulag. Without question, his moral courage fired the opposition to Soviet tyranny both within and without the Soviet Union that eventually led to the fall of the Evil Empire.

Today he writes in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal on the distinctive moral courage of one George W. Bush in his prosecution of the war on terror. SWNID confesses that Sharansky says better than we can why we admire Bush, despite his very human failings.

Read the whole piece by following the link, but enjoy this longish quotation:

Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.

That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.

With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure.