WHAT IS FRIEDMAN TALKING ABOUT? (Tom Friedman Wants Bush To Act Like A Liberal)

What loopiness masquerading as hard truths in Tom Friedman's column today. How on earth does rescinding future tax cuts help us win the war against Islamism, Saddam and al Qaeda? How on earth does firing Karl Rove help that either? Or cutting farm subsidies? Friedman has largely managed to absorb the idea that we are at war and that we need to win. good for him. But because there's not a Democratic president, he's conflicted. So he's telling Bush to adopt Democratic policies at home in order to win abroad. Run that by me again, would you? It's not that I disagree with Friedman on everything - although any columnist who resorts to that lame old crutch of calling for a Manhattan Project on anything needs to take a vacation. I just don't see the connections he draws. We face a perilous economic situation with deflationary pressures - so let's suck demand out of the economy by raising taxes! We need to defang the appeal of Islamism - so lets import Pakistani grain! Puhlease. The most important thing you have to do in a war is simply win it. Yes, let's do our best to rebuild Iraq as effectively as we can afterwards. Yes, let's spread the tax cut more evenly. But spare us the grandiose appeal for a Republican president to become a big government liberal if he wants support for the war on terror. It may help persuade Howell Raines that Friedman's not an evil neocon. It may help some sane pro-war liberals to get over their disdain for a sucessful Republican president. But to the rest of us, it sounds desperate and silly.

Tom Friedman is crybabying because the President that is doing what he wants done as far as the War on Terrorism goes is a nasty ol' Republican. In Friedman's fantasy, this effort should be led by Franklin Delano Bush. Sorry, Tom, but if Algore had been elected president we would probably still be debating about having an embargo against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Jonah Goldberg had an excellent column at National Review Online yesterday about leftist refusal to support military action that conduced to American interests. Apparently, even if no specifically American interest is involved, as would be the case in Iraq, leftists will not endorse the obviously morally right decision of a Republican president to go to war.

America will lose some number of lives and spend some billions of dollars taking down Saddam Hussein. We will not benefit in any way, except for averting a threat of regional terrorism using weapons of mass destruction -- a benefit Iraq's neighbor countries will feel far more greatly than we. But it'll be a Republican administration at the controls, so leftists simply can't have it.

War is undoubtedly horrible, but it does clarify moral issues. And there are things worse than war. The renunciation of moral principles in service to an envy-driven political agenda, for one.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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