What our soldiers died for

[This] is what our soldiers died for: a world in which Middle East dictators no longer murder their own, ruin their own societies, and then cynically use terrorism to whip up the Arab street and deflect their own self-induced miseries onto the United States. This is the calculus that led to 9/11, and the reason why Saddam gave sanctuary to 1980s terrorists, the killer Yasin who failed in his first attempt to take down the twin towers, and the likes of Zarqawi.

— Victor Davis Hanson