Safire:

The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East.

Is our pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost?

Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of American action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in antidemocratic hands.

1. In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi took one look at our army massing for the invasion of Iraq and decided to get out of the mass-destruction business. He has since stopped lying to gullible U.N. inspectors and ? in return for U.S. investment instead of invasion ? promises civilized behavior. The notion that this terror-supporting dictator's epiphany was not the direct result of our military action, but of decade-long diplomatic pleas for goodness and mercy, is laughable.

2. In Afghanistan, supposedly intractable warlords in a formerly radical Islamist, female-repressing culture of conflicting tribes and languages have come together. Under our NATO security umbrella and with some U.N. guidance, a grand conclave of leaders freed by U.S. power surprised the Arab world's doubting despots with the elements of a constitution that leads the way out of the past generation's abyss of barbarism.

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