Tooth Fairies and Liberals
November 18, 2004
So the marquee on Times Square reads “Maureen Dowd launched a Midol attack because she got stiffed by the tooth fairy”. Who knows, next she will be sending hate mail to Santa.
Dowd is in a cramp because the President is fighting, “a war shaped by the political clock, a war with no visible enemy, no coherent plan and no exit timetable.” Apparently, Dowd thinks war should be like her years at Catholic University. Where’s my reading list and syllabus?
I wonder what Franklin Roosevelt thought about “war shaped by the political clock”? Great Britain declared war on Germany in September of 1939. The Battle of Britain raged throughout 1940. Realizing the inevitability of war, but waiting for the political clock’s alarm to sound, the U.S. passed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. On September 4th, 1941, the U.S. destroyer Greer was fired upon by a German submarine. Yet, FDR kept his powder dry until December 7th, 1941 and finally declared war on Germany AFTER Hitler declared war on the U.S. Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock.
Apparently, Dowd is on a thousand year clock. Just how much is enough?
1. Bombing of Marine Barracks, Beirut, October 23, 1983.
2. Attempted Iraqi Attacks at the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia’s home residence and at the USIS library in Manila, January 18-19, 1991.
3. World Trade Center Bombing, February 26, 1993.
4. Attempted Assassination of President Bush by Iraqi Agents, April 14, 1993.
5. Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996.
6. U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998.
7. Attack on U.S.S. Cole, October 12, 2000.
8. And, of course, September 11, 2001
With a Cold War mentality, Dowd is mystified by the lack of a “visible enemy”. Sorry to disappoint the ever-vigilant Dowd and her set of toy soldiers...this is a non-traditional war. In a half-truth, she taunts, “Falluja...showed only how undefined this guerrilla war is.” A more correct version would assert that “a guerrilla war shows how undefined a guerrilla war is.”
On a happy note, this war is very diverse. The enemy includes Saudis, Egyptians, Yemenis, Iraqis, Iranians, Philipinos, Afghans, Indonesians, and even a little twerp from southern California (plus members of the elite media). On the downside, all of our enemies are Muslims...except those from CBS and the NYT’s. All Maureen has to do is to look for any liberal chanting “I support our troops” and she’ll find the visible enemy.
In the Gulf War of 1991, Colin Powell offered a clear explanation of a coherent war plan, “"First we're going to cut it off, then we're going to kill it." That seems to be what the U.S. forces are trying to do in the Iraq war. The trouble lies in the fact that every time we approach a “coherent” solution to the insurgency, our liberal friends at home, and abroad, incoherently tie both of America’s hands behind its back.
As Dowd would claim, “But what good does that do if ...if 100 percent of the Sunnis boycott the elections out of anger over the assault?” Well, what good are the elections if the Sunnis keep supporting insurgency and frustrating efforts at creating a democratic state? What good does it do if every time a terrorist kills an American, all he has to do is duck into a fortified mosque and scream “religious sanctuary”? And what good does it do if every time we kill anybody, the liberals scream “war crime”? There seems to be “no coherent plan” because the liberal concept of war is, in itself, incoherent.
If you want to talk incoherency, look at the latest “war crime”. A young Marine shot and killed a wounded insurgent in Fallujah. Of course the Marine had no way of knowing what the insurgent’s intent was in the middle of a battle. The marine who killed the Iraqi had been wounded in the face the previous day while another marine from the same unit had been killed by the booby-trapped body of a dead insurgent. Immediately, UN Human Rights chief Louise Arbour called for an investigation of alleged U.S. abuses in Fallujah.
Of course, the UN watchdogs had little to say about the freshly murdered Margaret Hassan, a kidnapped aid worker who devoted her life to the Iraqi people, after Al-Jazeera television received a video showing a hooded militant shooting a blindfolded Hassan in the head. And the liberals have been in mourning ever since the ouster of Saddam Hussein ended their get-rich-quick oil-for-food scheme.
Who among the “talking heads” would enter a room full of people who were, only seconds beforehand, trying to kill you and then start playing nice? New U.S. standing order #1 should be to toss a grenade into any door before entering it.
And...if Dowd wants a “timetable”, she should buy a calendar. That way she will have the certainty she yearns for in the knowledge that Christmas comes every December 25th. What exactly is an “exit timetable”?
War is an uncertain endeavor and the only “exit timetable” should be labeled “victory”. Only a La-Di-Da from the elite cabal could either be naïve or dishonest enough to insist on an “exit timetable”. Despite the fire-bombing of Tokyo, two atomic bombs and total devastation, what if the U.S. had set an “exit timetable” of August 15th, 1945 for the war in the Pacific? Would the Japanese have surrendered on August 14th knowing full well that they would be rid of the American threat the very next day?
Or would they have continued development of their biological and nuclear devices...and the means to deliver them? Now that would have been a quagmire!
There’s an insidious entitlement in the liberal persona. The least bit of uncertainty or disappoint throws any elite liberal into a hissy-fit of prepubescent magnitude. In some warped sense of divine endowment, a liberal has no staying power...except the power to infinitely whine. If I can’t win this game in the first round (without really trying), I quit...it was a stupid game anyways.
Unfortunately, war is not a child’s game. You just can’t put a tooth under a pillow and pray that the tooth fairy, disguised as your daddy, instantly compensates you a dollar to mask the natural function of growing up. So to Dowd and all the “toy soldier” liberals who can’t progress beyond the impulsive privilege of their “Boomer” childhoods, I say quit your bitching. And...Maureen...you’re correct... "Thanks, you've done quite enough.''
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