First Lady Writes Home on Afghanistan

Laura Bush, attending an international fundraising conference for Afghanistan after visiting the war-torn country, documents the distance it's traveled in recovery and the challenges ahead in a Wall Street Journal column. Hailing “amazing progress,” the first lady writes of lowered infant mortality and increased access to health care and education. But, she warns, there's still “danger lurking in the Afghan hills.”

"Americans learned on a clear September morning that misery and oppression half a world away can manifest themselves on the next block," Bush writes in arguing the importance of keeping al-Qaeda out of Kabul. "That lesson has been retaught in the years since, in cities from Jakarta to London to Madrid." (More Afghanistan stories.)