Post #19

Osama Bin Hitler? Pt. II

Continued, the “Nazi” speech, the address at the 88th annual American Legion National Convention delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….

* * *

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased? Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

[Uh, Pakistan?]

Can we afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply law enforcement problems, like robbing a bank or stealing a car; rather than threats of a fundamentally different nature requiring fundamentally different approaches?

[“fundamentally different” – not Nazis? Look, we need a comprehensive approach: Diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement and, yes, the military rooting out Al-Qaeda camps and toppling governments that harbor them – NOT spreading democracy.]

And can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America, not the enemy, but America, is the source of the world's troubles?

[NOT America – George W. Bush! Well, OK, Bush is not the source, but he’s no help either. And, most importantly, his actions have NOT made us safer – we are less safe today, five years after 9/11.]

These are central questions of our time, and we must face them and face them honestly.

[“honestly” – there’s a strange word in Bush’s Washington! :p]

We hear every day of new plans, new efforts to murder Americans and other free people. Indeed, the plot that was discovered in London that would have killed hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of innocent men, women and children on aircraft flying from London to the United States should remind us that this enemy is serious, lethal, and relentless.

But this is still not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there's more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

[I understand. I also know who is dividing – “with us or against us.”]

The struggle we are in -- the consequences are too severe -- the struggle too important to have the luxury of returning to that old mentality of "Blame America First."

[Yep, “Blame Bush!”]

And that is important in any long struggle or long war, where any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong, can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.

[NO confusion here – you are wrong, Mr. Rumsfeld. And, ultimately, your boss. The insistence on forcing liberty’s march at gunpoint has made us less safe by setting up a breeding ground for those who want to do us harm.]

Iraq, a country that was brutalized by a cruel and dangerous dictatorship, is now traveling the slow, difficult, bumpy, uncertain path to a secure new future under a representative government that will be at peace with its neighbors, rather than a threat to their own people, to their neighbors, or to the world.

[But how is this making us more safe? If democracy bloomed tomorrow in Iraq, tell me how that’ll stop planes flying into buildings?]