U.S. warships carrying 2,300 Marines are off Liberia's coast, U.S. forces still are in harm's way in Afghanistan, and the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations over, is drawing closer to the total military deaths before May 1. But some people think America is underengaged abroad.

Disregard [Tony Blair]'s straw men: No one says Afghan women were "content," [Saddam] was "beloved" and [Milosevic] was a "savior." But Blair suggests that unless you believe such preposterous things, you surely believe that "freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law" are not exclusively Western values. But what does that mean?

Does Blair believe that our attachment to freedom is not the product of complex and protracted acculturation by institutions and social mores that have evolved over centuries that prepared the social ground for seeds of democracy? When Blair says freedom as we understand it and democracy and the rule of law as we administer them are "the universal values of the human spirit," he is not speaking as America's Founders spoke of "self-evident" truths. They meant truths obvious to all minds unclouded by superstition and other ignorance.