Posted by
Over the Kohls on Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:40:26 PM
I disagree with Tom Freidman’s article “Who Will Tell the People?” on so many levels, I hardly know where to start.
One thing I do agree with is that the American people do want to see “American Nation Building” but we can’t have everything all the time. As much as Dems try to ignore it, we are in two wars at the moment: a war in Iraq, which the Dems will not acknowledge or support and the other one they say they support, the war in Afghanistan. By the way, did we do a lot of American Nation building during WWII? I think not and we didn’t even have the enormous weight of the current day entitlements to be concerned about. But we are fighting a very unique and difficult war against a shadowy enemy that does not fight in conventional ways. We saw first hand what happened to the American economy in the wake of 9-11. A similar strike or greater blow would have another serious impact on our economy and the daily life of every American could be changed forever. We have very short memories in this country and even shorter attention spans and our enemies have the patience of Job. If we give the enemy any slack they will strike us. That is a given. But Dems are against the war, against the Patriot Act, against electronic surveillance, against aggressive interrogation, against Gitmo, you name it. Anything to help the enemy. They’ll vehemently deny that accusation, of course.
So here we are in the middle of two wars and whining about our own infrasturcure. Why don’t we just win the wars we are in and get them over with instead of pulling against each other and going nowhere.
Friedman was gaga about the airport in Singapore. Does he expect that the federal government rebuild every American airport to that standard?
It’s true that the wealth transfer from America to the Middle East is unprecedented and dangerous but whose fault is that? We haven’t been able to drill for our own oil anywhere for decades. Every effort to allow drilling in ANWR is blocked, off shore sources of oil are stiff-armed by Dems at every turn, even now when oil prices are at levels where its economically feasible to seek out these oil sources, we can’t get permits to drill. We haven’t built a new refinery for over 20 years and every year when one or more go down for repairs, the price of gasoline spikes. Freidman complains when Bush goes to Saudi Arabia begging for more oil and lower prices. I agree, this is bad form for an American president but who put us in the situation? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim we should be energy independent when you are not willing to allow the oil companies to drill for our own.
Then, I love this line from Freidman’s column “Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents.” Nice of Mister “Down the Middle” Freidman to assume that all Republican attacks or criticisms are lies.
So, “Who will tell the people”, Mr. Freidman, that:
- we can’t be all things to all peoples at all times?
- the role of government is not to wipe every butt of every American but to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic?
- unless we are strong and beat this evil enemy that we won’t have a vibrant economy that we have come to enjoy?
- when al-Qaeda comes a calling again, neither Singapore nor anyone else for that matter will be helping us as we would if the shoe was on the other foot?
- if we are not safe from terrorism, there is no economy, no jobs or anything else that goes with it?
- the terrorists, if left to their own devices will do everything in their power to bring us down and our taking our eye off the ball, like the Dems want us to do, is exactly what the terrorists hope we’ll do?
It won’t be a Democrat, that for sure.