No, I don't mean the president missing a golf game or feeling compelled to make a statement within 5 minutes of an event. But maybe a discussion about the true level of the threat, the apparent ineptness of al Qaeda, our irrational level of fear and fear mongering, and the fact that the government will not be able to protect us from any and all terrorist attacks. (Sorry if that comes as a shock to anyone).
OK, how about this? While we're all scrambling to install airport screening machines that can spot what you ate yesterday for lunch, what's to prevent some crazed suicide bomber from just walking up and standing in the line before security and blowing himself and a couple hundred other people up? What happens then? Would we begin checking every person entering the airport? What about train stations? Shopping malls? Football stadiums?
We get to choose how we want to live. Yesterday, Maureen Dowd made it pretty clear she needs some near constant reassurance that everything is gonna be OK.
No Drama Obama is reticent about displays of emotion. The Spock in him needs to exert mental and emotional control. That is why he stubbornly insists on staying aloof and setting his own deliberate pace for responding � whether it�s in a debate or after a debacle. But it�s not O.K. to be cool about national security when Americans are scared.
He�s so sure of himself and his actions that he fails to see that he misses the moment to be president � to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders, who reassures and instructs the public at traumatic moments.
For Christ's sake, we've become a country of neurotic, panicky bed wetters.
Al Qaeda can clearly do some horrible damage. But how in the world did we let a couple hundred cave dwelling psychopaths drive the foreign policy and national psyche of the most powerful country on earth?
Doesn't the fact that, eight years after 9/11, these assholes are still trying to use airplanes as weapons give up some indication about their level of sophistication as an enemy? Doesn't the fact that the big al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. since 9/11 were attempted by Robert Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; a couple of bumbling amateurs equipped with poorly designed explosive devices? Reid couldn't light the fuse of his shoe bomb because he'd been wearing the shoes for a couple days and the fuse was wet with foot sweat. Abdulmutallab was an amateur who attempted to detonate the bomb with a too small fuse while plainly visible in his seat just before the plane was scheduled to land in Detroit.
Unlike Maureen Dowd, who seems to want hysterical, blowing smoke up her butt assurances, give me a calm, serious, let's put this thing into some rational perspective president.
Fixxored.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the fact that the big al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. since 9/11 were attempted by Robert Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; a couple of bumbling amateurs equipped with US Visas?
Thanks you.
ReplyDeleteIn a quiet, even boring way, this president will accomplish more in one term than most who have the chance do in two.