The Strategy Page has this useful paragraph on Afghanistan:

John Fund explains how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope Paul II, won the Cold War. Michael Barone writes that Reagan rescued America from despair and totalitarianism. This is George F. Will’s understanding of Reagan in Newsweek. Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time, says that Reagan had a vision and the courage to endure all the doubters. And Peggy Noonan writes that "Ronald Reagan told the truth to a world made weary by lies."

Bill Buckley gave this speech on Reagan in 1999. George W. Bush’s comments from this morning. Lou Cannon’s lengthy obituary in the WaPo. Steven Hayward’s fine piece (in case you missed it below). And this is George Will’s effort. And this from Mark Steyn. And the Belmont Club offers this from Macaulay:

I grew up with Ronald Reagan. I walked precincts for him when he ran for governor of California in 1966, worked for his election to the presidency twice, and ended up in his administration. I liked everything about him. By the time he became president I came to love him, the way an ordinary citizen can have an honest affection for a public figure.

Ronald Reagan was the antidote to the nihilism of the Sixties. Some in the country—especially the sophisticated intellectual elite and the media—had not only come to doubt our policies, but had come to have profound skepticism about the things for which—I thought—we had always stood. The central idea of republican government was placed in question. The ground under our feet became unsteady. The Carter presidency became the political exemplification of this nihilistic onslaught against the last best hope. There was doubt and cynicism and a lot of shouting. It was asserted that the country was not only ungovernable, but that the American spirit had waned. Carter said that we had an inordinate fear of Communism, and was unable to recognize the nature of Soviet tyranny until the monster bit in Afghanistan. At one point in his presidency, Carter asked the people to think of some nice things to say about America. But his disposition revealed the hopelessness he felt and conveyed to the American people. And, even worse, Carter always implied that the people were to blame for this malaise. The people were despondent and gloomy and Carter called for seminars on the question. The ancient creed—the massive fact of the American idea—seemed to be teetering.

Ronald Reagan was the political antidote to this shrunken view of America. He reminded us that we stood for something great, that we were made of sterner stuff than the nay-sayers implied. He not only made the right arguments and proposed sound policies, but his very person, his character, was such as to make it entirely believable. This was an entirely American man. It is almost impossible to disagree with a man who is full of hope, who looks you in the eye and tells you that you are capable of both self-government and greatness, while joking and laughing all the while. The insensate Liberals mocked him for his cowboy boots and hat, for his clear and straightforward talk, for his eternal hopefulness. By doing this they revealed for the first time in American politics that they were no longer the party of the people: They had come to mistrust the ordinary and decent. Reagan could be for the people because he truly was of the people. Reagan trusted the people and their capacity for self-government. Everyone but the elites sensed this. The Liberal elites underestimated him just the way they underestimated the American people. They may have been embarrassed by his designation of the USSR as an evil empire, but every ordinary person from Ashland to Budapest to Vladivostok knew it was true. The only shocking thing about the statement was that an American president had said it, a president able to make a moral distinction. This was shocking to their nihilistic sensibilities. Yet that simple statement was the final cause of the death of Communism.

Ronald Reagan helped Americans regain their footing. He reminded his fellow citizens what we once were and what we may yet become. He knew that we needed to hear once again the language of our ancient faith, the drumbeat of the American Revolution, the nature of limited constitutional government. He reminded us what held us together, what made us citizens of the shining city on the hill. He helped us reconstruct our ancient faith on solid ground. He was utterly confident that the character of the people was yet sound, and he always appealed to the better angels of our nature. He knew that we were not made of cotton candy, and that free men should smile while they do their hard work in the world. Because of Ronald Reagan the Republican Party became the conservative party, and because of him the country itself was given a new birth of freedom that should be lasting.

This morning, a remote detonated bomb detonated in Tuz. The explosion killed one Iraqi police officer, and injured six Iraqi civilians. I have been told that three suspects have been detained.

The mail has been slow coming here at Bernstein. When I first arrived, the guys had received mail only a couple of times in about 6 weeks. Packages sent well over a month before with items such as eyeglasses were in limbo. The mail service is still slow and inconsistent--even compared to mail service to those in the field during the Gulf War, but the men are now at least getting some mail each week.

When mail does arrive, it is like Christmas. The troopers open the care packages filled with food (i.e., “pogey bait”), hometown newspapers, and pictures from home with anticipation. Then there are the letters from family, friends, and from people they don’t even know who write to wish them well. The soldiers pour over the letters, reading selections aloud, and frequently take the time to respond to those who have taken the time to write them. Of the correspondence from people who the soldiers do not know, some of the most amusing letters come from school children. For example, one student wrote to Staff Sergeant Gleason: “Thank you for defending our country. You must be exhausted.” Some of the children send drawings, like the American flags colored by a kindergarten class which line the main hallway in the barracks. While the guys appreciate care packages sent by those they do not know, a number have said that they prefer letters. For those who wish to send a letter to a member of the unit, here is their address:

Any Soldier

Echo Troop 196th Cav.

30 HSB, 1st ID

Operation Iraqi Freedom

FOB Bernstein

APO AE 09392

From an obit I have written on National Review Online:

Shortly after Ronald Reagan’s landslide election to the presidency in 1980, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company produced a study of the effect of the presidency on life expectancy, finding that being president shortens a person’s life expectancy nearly as much as cigarette smoking. On average, being president reduced life expectancy by 3.9 years (or 5.2 years among 20th century presidents). Reagan, Met Life projected, could expect to live another 11 years, to 1992. Typical of Reagan to become the longest-lived ex-president in American history; his entire political career consisted of transcending the expectations of the legions of people who underestimated him.

"As many as 10,000 third graders, twice as many as last year, are expected to be held back this year under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tough new promotion policy, according to citywide test results announced yesterday.

Related to Jeremy Rabkin’s piece on the Geneva Convention and those held at Gitmo, is this story coming from Bolt Hall law school:

"A group of students at the University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law circulated a petition last week calling on law professor John Yoo to ’repudiate’ a 2002 memo he had written when he worked for the Bush Justice Department or ’resign’ his academic post. The memo advised that the Geneva conventions did not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Oddly, the petition writers claimed that their attempt to drive Yoo from academia did not ’constitute an attack on academic freedom.’"

A serious and recurrent problem in Iraq has been the scarcity of up-armored Humvees. Many units in Operation Iraqi Freedom 1 did not have the advantage of up-armored Humvees until close to the end of the year. When I embedded with 1AD in Baghdad, the Division was a few weeks from the scheduled end of their one-year rotation, and they had only recently received an incomplete compliment up-armored Humvees. Many of their vehicles were still unarmored, but had metal plates added, for example, to cover the slats in open back “cargo” model Humvees. As one of the medics explained to me (after requesting that I not use his name), the plates were really there just to give the soldiers some [false] sense of security. The plates were not sufficient to stop bullets, as the troop had learned when one of their own men accidentally shot through a plate with a round smaller than the 7.62 commonly used by anti-Coalition forces. The up-armored Humvees, by contrast, are real lifesavers. In the Adhamiyah region of Baghdad, an up-armored Humvee was hit with a 155 mm mortar round configured as an IED. The Humvee was wrecked, 7 Iraqis traveling on the street were killed by the blast, but every soldier in the Humvee walked away. Sgt. Yeb, who was in the Humvee at the time of the IED, told me that if the makers of the up-armored Humvee ever need a spokesman, he’s their man.

Yet up-armored Humvees were slow coming to the soldiers. When Echo 196 came into country, they were promised that they would not leave Kuwait until they had up-armored Humvees. Despite this promise, the company traveled all the way through Iraq in the back of unarmored 5-ton-trucks (essentially large cargo trucks with wood slats)—leaving the troops exposed to the elements and the enemy. When I met up with E 196 here at Bernstein, they finally had up-armored Humvees . . . but not enough. The scarcity meant that platoons were forced to share Humvees, which in turn meant that platoon missions had to be staggered to take into account the limited resources. It also meant that the crews did not have regular vehicles which they used on a consistent basis—a small detail except that the idiosyncrasies of a radio set or of the vehicle has a strange way of becoming important in combat situations. Humvees with mechanical problems that ordinarily would have merited taking the vehicle out of commission were used because the company simply could not afford to lose a Humvee, and when Humvees were sent for service, getting parts became a quest all its own.

Charles Krauthammer, using these reflections of John Keegan on how messy the ends of wars tend to be, reminds us that--despite the pessimistic tone of the elitre media--things are going rather well in Iraq. With the establishment of the new transitional government, the first critical steps have been taken. He finds it encouraging.