Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces surrounded a rebel hide-out in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, and the number of insurgents killed from three days of fighting rose to 102, the defense ministry said.

The left generally enjoys inapt comparisons between Iraq and Afghanistan when advantageous — one is like the other when events in the other are politically vulnerable. In this attempt, the AP reporter saw defeat in victory, invoking anonymous "anxiety" over a similarity to the battle against Near East fascists in Iraq, despite the enemy's steady unraveling in that theater, to say nothing of the belief that the trapped numbers of Taliban include what fragments are left of enemy leadership. It was once understood among free men that a war continued on account of the lawless; that running days of violence were the enemy's making. Until that sense returns, terror's apologists must be challenged in word and speech.

"The men and women who built this country and those who have made it prosper in good times and bad, have always been men and women whose faith in our country's future was unshakeable," said Fulgham. "If the U.S. Agency for International Development is 'America's best public diplomacy,' as the Secretary of State said recently, then our time is now."

USAID's work — such as a brief on Afghanistan's burgeoning agronomy — can be inspected here.

In a newsletter issued June 15 by the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, Afghan Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad praised the success of Afghan women entrepreneurs, adding: "We are proud of them. Our delegation will not only share ... how much they have accomplished in a few years, but [will] also benefit from this opportunity to interact and expand their networks and horizon."

Afghan women have flourished in less serious — though perhaps more memorable — pursuits, the sum of native strength and foreign generosity, and the figure of a world no longer half-free.