Last year’s terrorist attacks on the United States illuminated capabilities for human harm and economic dislocation previously unimagined. Our president has articulated the determination of the world’s free nations to deal with such threats in a comprehensive and forceful manner lest they gain the upper hand and reduce our civilization to a collection of constantly warring clans—in effect, a throwback to the Dark Ages. This effort, as President Bush noted, will not be short-lived, nor  will success be easy, but it must and will be pursued. Only through success can our world continue to move forward to new and greater levels of peace and prosperity and a better quality of life for all the world’s citizens.

One of the building blocks in creating more civilized and productive societies is an effective effort to deal with issues of fraud and corruption. Anticorruption efforts should not be thought of as some kind of abstract moral crusade of concern only to starry-eyed reformers, but must be viewed in practical terms as an integral component of the fashioning of the frameworks for progress in nearly every sphere of human endeavor.

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