Just has that "something" about it...
Posted on 11/27/2002 10:11:55 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Walking through my neighborhood, I passed a bumper sticker. You know the one: American flag waving and the caption ''These colors never run. Never have. Never will.'' And I was struck by the thought that since Sept 11, 2001, all we seem to be doing as a nation is running.
First, running off to bomb and destroy Afghanistan in the name of liberating its people and destroying a mortal threat to our American way of life. Then, running off to a massive military buildup in the Middle East in preparation for a war in Iraq, in the name of liberating its people and removing a potential threat to our way of life. And finally on Nov. 19, running in Chicken Little fashion crying ''The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" as the U.S. Senate passes legislation beginning the largest reorganization of government in over half a century, all in the name of protecting Americans from unknown threats to our way of life.
The executive branch has run to the Pentagon and asked them to begin researching a program that will make every American a suspect as a national database of telephone, computer and credit card transactions are drawn together and cross-referenced, in the name of protecting what was our American way of life.
Fifty-two years ago this country was a shining beacon of democracy. In spearheading the creation of the United Nations and launching the Marshall Plan, the United States made a statement that it would engage cooperatively with the rest of the world and lend assistance to countries devastated by the recent war. It was a nation confident of its place on the world stage and proud of the freedoms its people enjoyed. We now see an administration so gripped with fear that it is unable to accurately assess where threats truly exist.
Threats to people and property will always exist. How we respond is what makes the United States the country that we are proud to live in. Now is not the time for panic and unilateral imperialism. Now is the time for reasoned assessment of immediate vs. potential threats and intelligent, thoughtful determination of credibility. Let us re-energize our great potential for diplomacy in the Middle East by working toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis rather than running off to war with Saddam Hussein.
Let us renounce the Total Information Awareness project and work to keep the new Homeland Security department, with its projected170,000 employees, under control, while protecting the civil liberties of its employees as well. It is time to think hard and long about where we are running, before it's too late to walk back to where we belong.
I generally don't like to post "letters to the editor" unless they're written by someone well-known but the lunacy of this one is so entertaining that I just couldn't resist. This boy longs for fifty-two years ago, a time that the liberals refer to as the height of "The Red Scare" and Harry Truman's Korean "police action" had just started to become the disastrous undeclared war with Red China!
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