Steyn: No Yankee Ingenuity

Mark Steyn laments our lack of ingenuity and puts it in historical perspective.

The glamor boys of the moment -- Obama, Edwards -- run on watery pabulum from the easy-listening oldies playlist. Five years after 9/11, we're not looking ahead, we're looking back -- in the legislature, in the courts, in the media: Bush's "lies" about WMD, the Senate vote to authorize the "use of force" against Iraq, Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, Joe Wilson's self-leaking of his mischaracterization of his trip to Niger . . . rear-view mirror stuff, all of it, endlessly. On the dark shapes looming in the windshield -- Iran, Sudan and much else -- we operate ineffectually through yesterday's institutions, like the U.N. and the EU. Two billion dollars from American taxpayers go to the government of Egypt and in return they give Hezbollah's TV network a slot on the state satellite system. At the gas pump, we fund Hugo Chavez and the Saudi radicalization of Muslim populations around the planet. The obvious transformative technology -- an alternative to the global economy's oil dependence -- is as far away as it was on Sept. 10, and the Alexander Graham Bells of our day are busy inventing the ''self-repairing condom'' -- a marvel of nanotechnology to be sure, but not one with much strategic use unless you can supersize it and unroll it down every Wahhabi mosque.

Read the whole thing.