The right country to start with is Afghanistan, because it has been harboring Osama bin Laden for years. His terrorist training camps there are the most immediate threat to American safety.

In another sense, we cannot attack the wrong country if we attack Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sudan or Afghanistan. All of them not only give shelter and support to terrorists, they are terrorist governments themselves. Their rulers stay in power by threatening those who disobey with severe punishment or death, and by making their subjects feel there's an outside enemy whom they must unite to defeat. The United States is literally the worst nightmare of such dictators: a place where people expect their government to protect them from harm, and let their life, liberty and property alone.

The decision of such a tyrannical government to kill, to maim, to censor, to degrade, to punish, to repress--that is not a matter of cultural diversity. Such governments do not offer an "alternative lifestyle" that we should respect. They do not merely practice different ideas. They practice evil ideas. They should be explicitly condemned and, if they threaten American lives, they should be obliterated.