An old idea: "Early Push-back"

Dan Henninger has some interesting remarks today in Opinion Journal/WSJ, which seems a better read today than the Globe. His calling the Bush foreign policy “early push-back” reminds me of Churchill (Winston, not Ward!) who advocated exactly this against Hitler at the beginning of the German re-armament in 1935-36. For this he was dismissed as a war monger and banned outright from being heard on the BBC. Henninger's observation that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is becoming a legitimized tactic of war makes me think of Gerry Adams and the IRA. Money paragraph:

"The Rwandan genocide was not spontaneous. It was organized, its intent knowable at an early stage. It is plausible, in retrospect, that a limited military intervention in Rwanda--by European or African nations--would have forestalled that genocide. Was there a moment when we could have stopped Milosevic's militias? Is early 'push-back' feasible?

Some will argue no, and the answer may be no. But I think those who instinctively say no are looking through the rearview mirror of history, at a world whose realities have changed--with the technologies of death becoming commoditized and the eyes of the media recording the results. Amid this fateful 'reality,' George Bush is traveling the world proselytizing for another commodity--a political culture summed up in one word: freedom."

It’s a good read. Right here.