Time for good news

That's the theme of my column this week in U.S. News. It's based on two reports, the International Monetary Fund showing record world economic growth and the Human Security Center of the University of British Columbia showing that armed conflict in the world is at record lows.

Readers and viewers of mainstream media, peppered with woe-is-me economic news and footage of the latest bombing in Iraq, can be forgiven if they lose sight of the larger heartening trends. But we shouldn't forget them.

Here is also, from the veteran British correspondent William Shawcross in the Sunday Times of London, good news from Iraq. Shawcross points to the buildup of the increasingly competent Iraqi Army and argues that it's not time to leave Iraq, because we're winning. Here's an important point to remember, especially for those shrieking antiwar types who seem convinced that George W. Bush is the worst tyrannical monster in the world:

"Even those who were opposed to the invasion of Iraq should recognize that this is a whole new battle—between the values of a liberal civil society and nihilism, sometimes Islamic but always nihilism."