I DON’T WANT TO BE A PARAGON
I, for one, am heartily sick and
tired of the world expecting the USA to be a paragon of virtue.
Where did we get the silly notion that the other nations can all be as
unreasonable, as horrific, as criminal as they wish to
be, but that our country has to be the only one that is honorable,
correct, and noble???
The liberals enjoy no end of
lambasting President Bush’s selection of Iraq
as one of our targets of reprisal for Nine-Eleven, but why do they not ever
blast Al Qaeda for its choice of the World
Trade Center
as victim? Did that monstrous organization ever second-guess itself and its
actions? But for some odd, nonsensical reason, the US is always supposed to do so. Our
country, and only our country, is supposed to debate to death every move that
it ever makes, and woe on it if it is ever so much as one percent in error.
It’s supposed to justify, ad nauseum, to every man, woman, and child on the
planet, every infinitesimal move that it ever makes.
Now where is the justice, or the sense, in that???
I say that it doesn’t even
matter which of our Muslim targets are more justifiable, and which are less
so, if indeed there even is a “less so.” The only relevant, vital fact
is that we chose some targets: that we did something. The Muslim world
now knows, at the very least, that the United States cannot be trifled
with, that it will respond, not merely with words, but with actions. The
Muslims have to be at least thinking, “Oops, we got clobbered; we can’t just
attack the US
with impunity.” In fact, if we made any wrong choices, and that’s a very
big “if,” then I say, “So much the better.” In my fence-fight, I learned that
the best way in which to defeat nut-cases is to convince them that you’re even
nuttier than they are. It makes them think twice before bothering you again.
So to the question of whether or
not we should be in Iraq, if there even is a right reason to answer
negatively, then I say, “No, because there should not still be any Iraq in
which to be. We should have nuked the Middle
East, period. When you have one group whose goal it is to wipe out
all other groups, then that group is the one that is forfeit, for the
good of all.”
“The needs of the many outweigh the
needs of the few.”
