The Awful Truth from Down Under

Joanna Murray-Smith gives props to America in the Australian newspaper The Age: “The Awful Truth: Arrogant America got it right”

Many of us from other Western countries, Australia included, have an entrenched view of America that oscillates between fury and hilarity at its blinkered patriotism, at its presidential high-jinks with Bush as cowboy, complete with wardrobe, at its growing Fox and Friends right-wing self-congratulation and its seeming inability or refusal to search its own soul.

And yet, the World's Policeman did something no one else could or would do. It could have all gone horribly wrong, but it didn't. Civilians died, young men and women paid all kinds of prices and both Western and Iraqi children who lost fathers or homes have had their personal maps drastically redrawn by the hand of fate. But the fear and the torture is over. America, in all its infuriating arrogance, acted. Not so long ago, I dreaded this. And now, I have to admit, I was wrong.

(Hat tip to Real Clear Politics)