It is hard to get there if you don't know where you want to go. Despite the Democrats gaining control of Congress and his own previous mistakes, President Bush still has the opportunity to leave a constructive economic legacy, but to do so he must first clearly define his goals and determine what is realistically doable. It turns out there is a trio of legacies - regarding reforming Social Security, excessive spending, and excessive regulation - being made available to him.

You may have missed it in all the holiday excitement, but on December 30th the main Madrid airport (Barajas) was hit by a car bomb. It's a real blow to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero, whose nickname, believe it or not, is Bambi. The appropriately nicknamed coward was elected on the backlash of the 3/11 (2004) Madrid train bombings by cowardly Spaniards rejecting the courageous Jose Aznar. Bambi immediately withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq (where they had performed extremely well, by the way), proclaimed al Qaeda guilty of the train attacks (after Aznar had fingered the Basques), and then immediately started a Peace Process with ETA. Bambi Zapatero is one of those appeasement enthusiasts who yearns for defeat and humiliation at all costs, and just the day before the airport car bomb he had triumphantly hailed the great success of his pre-emptive surrender.

It's hard to win a war if you quit fighting in the middle of it.  That's the lesson we should learn from Ethiopia's New Year's message to us. Six months ago, when the militia of the Islamic Courts Union seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu, it appeared that the al Qaeda-affiliated radicals were on the verge of a major triumph.  The redoubtable StrategyPage declared them "unstoppable," and the usual hand wringers were urging us to negotiate with them. Ethiopia's military quickly defeated them last week because it unapologetically used force against vicious people who understand only force.  They killed the people they needed to kill without worrying overmuch about collateral damage, and not at all about world opinion.  And though the Ethiopian soldiers are Christians, they were hailed as liberators in this overwhelmingly Moslem country. We need to apply Ethiopia's lesson to Iraq.

Washington politics can be so much fun if you look upon them as the world's best circus.  This week's clown act was hilariously performed by the Breck Boy, John Edwards, announcing his candidacy for the presidency in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. It was especially funny for me, as I was in New Orleans at the time for New Year's.  The 9th Ward was the area most devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.  The day after Edwards' appearance, I drove my son Jackson through it. Endless block after block after block, street after street after street, the small cottage homes are unlivable and abandoned.  At the most, one home out of every two or three dozen is repaired and occupied. Even many of these, however, have only cosmetic repairs covering up irreparable damage from mold.  After all, all these homes were under water for weeks.  Thousands upon thousands of homes that have to be torn down are still standing because Mayor Ray Nagin insists they be rebuilt - which they never will be. What he can't face, what John Edwards can't face, is that the corrupt heart of Democrat control of Louisiana - New Orleans' 9th Ward - is gone.

One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.  That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam's:  Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for "blessed," baraka, used in the Koran. His father deserted the family when Barack Jr. was two and returned to Kenya.  His mother then married another Moslem studying at UH, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia.  He moved with his mother and stepfather to Jakarta when he was six, where he attended a Moslem medressa (religious school). That makes him a Moslem.  That he denies that he ever was and is a Christian instead makes him, in Moslem eyes, also something much worse:  an apostate.  Apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.

Con Coughlin is one of the best British journalists on the military/intelligence/national security beat, and he is privy to the thinking of top policy people and field commanders. In the London Telegraph (12/22), he reveals that both Washington and London are grudgingly coming to accept the fact that Iran is waging war against us in Afghanistan and Iraq. This reluctance was obviously peculiar to anyone who knew anything about Iran's real activities in the region. Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan always knew that the Iranians had helped "orchestrate the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many soldiers," and are "actively supporting and providing equipment to Taliban-related groups" in Afghanistan. It's quite a change, and a welcome one, although there was never any excuse for the willful and deliberate refusal to see what Iran has been up to since 2001.

On Christmas day this week, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report which indicates Iranian oil production is about to plunge. Iran currently earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports.  Oil profits account for about 65 percent of Iranian government revenues.  But Iranian oil exports could decline by half within five years, and virtually disappear within ten, said the report's author Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The effect on Iran would be catastrophic. Thanks to mismanagement by the mullahs, and corruption on a scale so vast as to make even an Iraqi blush, Iran's economy is already a basket case.  Here's an example:  Iran, one of the world's largest oil producers, has to import 35% of its gasoline.  The fools haven't built new refineries and can't operate efficiently the ones they have.  So they have to import refined gasoline for their cars. Get ready for the next War For Oil in the Middle East.