Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Iranian Time Bomb," has an eye-opening essay on the op-ed page of this weekend's Wall Street Journal. Excerpt: "The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes--from Hezbollah and al Queda to the Iranian Khomeinists and Saudi Wahhabis--who swear to destroy us and others like us. Like their 20th-century predecessors, they openly proclaim their intentions, and carry them out whenever and wherever they can....Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of a failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s." U.S. administrations from Carter through Bush have done a poor job of coming to terms with the threat presented by Iran's Khomeinist regime. It's easy to criticize the bellicose statement made Israel's Transport Minister, who may have been jockeying for internal political position, but he certainly drew a line in the sand, compared to the wishy-washy diplomatic "warnings" of Condoleeza Rice.