Today's Reading Assignment

...from Victor Davis Hanson, and posted at RealClearPolitics. He sees 2010, to borrow a phrase, as the year our "chicken come home to roost." As Dr. Hanson writes:

Take foreign relations. In 2009, the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy, we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships.

But so far these leaders -- like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- have only interpreted Barack Obama's serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited. They play the part of the pushy class bully, we the whiny nerd.

But foreign relations represents only one of the grave challenges we are facing. Despite Mr. Obama's "outreach" to the Muslim world, Islamic radicals continue their war against us:

"...as 2009 ended, we were reminded that radical Islamic terrorists still want to kill us for who we are, and what we represent, rather than any particular thing we do.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, nursed on radical Islamic doctrine, murdered 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian at Ford Hood, Texas. Five would-be terrorists with U.S. citizenship were arrested in Pakistan on their way to link up with Islamist militant groups. And Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was stopped in flight from Amsterdam before he could blow up an American passenger jet.

Note that all these recent terrorists were not poor, lived in the hospitable West - and cared little that the Obama administration has been critical of the U.S.'s prior war-on-terror policies. So, while we assured the world in 2009 that we wouldn't be overzealous in our various efforts to stop terrorists, the terrorists proved they most certainly would be in theirs to kill us.

Couple these challenges with out-of-control federal spending (and a possible spike in energy prices), and we've got the makings of a very dark year, indeed. As 2009 came to a close, many Americans expressed relief, believing that things can only get better in 2010. If any of the problems listed by Hanson grow worse (a virtual certainty), we may be longing the "good ol' days" of 2009" on New Year's Day of 2011.